Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ENERGY

North Sea Oil

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what is his latest estimate of the total United Kingdom investment currently being undertaken in the exploitation of oil in the North Sea; and what is the anticipated rate of return on this investment assuming the present international price of oil.

Mr. Arnold: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what is his most recent estimate of the full development cost of North Sea oil.

The Minister of State, Department of Energy (Mr. John Smith): It is not possible to give a reliable estimate of the full development cost for North Sea oil. That will depend upon a variety of unknown factors, including the number and magnitude of new commercial developments and of future finds. The United Kingdom's offshore oilfields vary a good deal and the rates of return on investment in those now under development also vary. There is no average or typical figure that would not be misleading.

Mr. Stonehouse: In view of the escalation in the cost of developing the North Sea and the present slippage in the international price of oil, with the price of Iranian oil to be reduced by 9·5 cents per barrel, is my hon. Friend satisfied that investment in marginal oilfields will be viable? Will the Minister give an undertaking that the British consumer will not have to pay a protected higher price in order to justify that investment?

Mr. Smith: Cost escalation is a serious matter. The Department of Energy has put in hand a study of North Sea energy cost escalation and we expect to report the findings to the House shortly. We are concerned about marginal fields. It is in the national interest that they be developed. That is why safeguard provisions were put in the Oil Taxation Act, and some in the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Act, which can be used to assist marginal fields. The development of our oil resources will be important to the country and will guarantee the security of a supply of oil which we expect to sell at a proper market price.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the decision by the Iranians indicates a further step in the slide of oil prices, which shows that it is difficult to repeal the law of supply and demand? Is it not therefore all the more important that we get a minimum price guarantee in the Common Market as the Prime Minister has said that we have such an agreement? What is holding up that agreement?

Mr. Smith: The hon. Gentleman must be aware that the Government have supported the concept of a minimum selling price. That matter is under discussion both in the context of an international energy agreement and within the EEC. It is impossible to predict the future of oil prices and it behoves everyone to treat the matter with caution.

Mr. Arnold: In view of that reply, what account is being taken of such estimates as are available in preparing advice by the Department of Energy to the Foreign Secretary in seeking to formulate our attitude towards the EEC energy policy?

Mr. Smith: There is constant consultation between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Both Departments have worked very closely for the representation of British interests in the EEC, the IEA and other international bodies.

Mr. Buchan: I return to the subject of United Kingdom investment in oil. Has my hon. Friend noticed that the Scottish National Party has said that, in the unlikely event of its being in a position to


fulfil its promise to grant autonomy to Shetland, it will use international law to ensure that neither the bulk nor, indeed, any of the oil goes to the Shetland Isles? This view was put in the speech of the hon. Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Reid).

Mr. Smith: I noticed that speech and I was surprised by the attitude of the Scottish National Party. One notices a general retreat by the Scottish National Party on the subject of oil, no doubt because the Shetland Isles have made it crystal clear that they wish to remain part of the United Kingdom and two-thirds of North Sea oil is located off the coast of Shetland.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: Far from my party retreating on the subject of oil, and bearing in mind that the World Bank forecasts an increase in the price of oil over the next decade, has the hon. Gentleman read the report by Alec Kemp of the Department of Political Economy at Aberdeen University, which was featured on BBC television last week, suggesting that a very high rate of return will be offered to oil companies in the existing oilfields at existing prices? Will the hon. Gentleman refer the whole question of the energy taxation structure to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a full review?

Mr. Smith: I am aware of that article. There are many predictions, assumptions and forecasts about what will happen to oil prices and many views about what should be the level of taxation. The Government's attitude has been to strike a fair balance between achieving a good return to the nation and making North Sea oil operations in the private sector profitable and on-going. We believe that the situation that we have reached, in which we expect about 70 per cent. of the profits to return to the nation, reflects adequately our determination to get a fair return for the nation.

Mr. Tim Renton: asked the Secretary of State for Energy how many meetings there have been involving the Department of Energy, the BNOC, and the oil companies to discuss BNOC's participation in the development of North Sea oil; and how many firm agreements have been concluded.

Mr. Gray: asked the Secretary of State for Energy whether he will make a

further statement on the progress towards participation agreements between the BNOC and the oil companies.

Mr. Molloy: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a further statement on the progress of Her Majesty's Government's policy with regard to 51 per cent. participation in North Sea oil.

Mr. John Smith: Over 150 meetings have been held with representatives of the 36 companies currently developing the 14 commercial oilfields. Since their appointment the Chairman and members of BNOC have been kept in touch with the negotiations. The first detailed agreements should be signed in the next few weeks. Discussions with other companies are progressing satisfactorily.

Mr. Renton: Will the Minister of State now tell us the other side of the coin? How many major oil companies—following Exxon's lead—will take the Government at their word, that participation is voluntary, and will not volunteer? Will he further confirm to the House that the Government will not use the existence of either loans or guarantees to Burmah to force Burmah into selling any of its stake in the Thistle field?

Mr. Smith: I believe that the Government will be able to reach satisfactory agreements with the oil companies concerned in the participation negotiations. I have no reason to doubt that. As the hon. Gentleman will know, discussions are proceeding with Burmah to purchase all or part of the assets which Burmah holds in the North Sea. As discussions are continuing, I do not think that I should say anything further at this stage.

Mr. Skeet: Will the Minister indicate what will happen to those companies which are prepared to stand out against the Government on this issue? Will he recollect that this arrangement is voluntary and that there are existing contracts which he is seeking to negate? Will he indicate whether he will be returning to the House for a parliamentary process to nationalise the rights of those companies?

Mr. Smith: The Government are proceeding with voluntary negotiations with these companies and progress is such


that it leads us to think that we shall reach a satisfactory agreement with the companies concerned. I do not know why Opposition Members wish to encourage the companies not to co-operate, because it is in the interests of the companies and this country that they should co-operate.

Coal

Mr. Peter Morrison: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he is satisfied that coal will continue to remain competitive against other fuels in 1976.

The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Alex Eadie): Yes, Sir. I expect coal to retain its general competitive position this year.

Mr. Morrison: Does the Minister agree with me that the ban on overtime by the NUM is likely to make coal less competitive this year? Given that fact, what representations has he or his right hon. Friend made to the leaders of the NUM on this particular matter?

Mr. Eadie: I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no threat to coal supplies at present. If the hon. Gentleman reflects, I think that he will agree that it would not be prudent to deal with this problem today. After all, eventually it will have to be dealt with by the unions.

Mr. Skinner: With his long mining experience, does my hon. Friend appreciate that one of the reasons why the National Coal Board is able to be competitive is that among its many collieries it has some which are profitable, such as Langwith Colliery, which has made about £1 million during the last 22 months of its operations? Is not this a question of seeing not NUM leaders but the National Coal Board in order to get the Board to change its mind? It is the Board which has created this problem—people such as Sir Derek Ezra, people whose wages are paid by those who sent us here.

Mr. Eadie: If my hon. Friend reflects, he will realise that it was my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who arranged a meeting between the representatives of the NUM, the Chairman of the NCB and the Department of Energy.

I repeat that this is a matter for the unions to resolve. There is no threat to coal supplies at present.

Mr. Patrick McNair-Wilson: Does the Minister agree, however, that over the last two years the coal industry has enjoyed a unique opportunity in relation to its competitive position as a result of the rise in oil prices? With the increases in coal prices now announced, this headroom is in danger of disappearing. Does the Minister further agree that this is the time for everyone in the industry to recognise that high output and productivity are what the industry needs, because they will provide an opportunity not only for selling to major customers here but for developing the export trade?

Mr. Eadie: I think that what the hon. Gentleman has said is to some extent a compliment to the Department of Energy, to the extent that he has acknowledged that the policies of the present Government and the Department of Energy have given a greater stability and opportunity to the mining industry over the last two years than the industry has had for quite a time. That is a fact.
The hon. Member mentioned opportunities for coal. It is a fact that coal is cheaper than oil and that in the present financial climate this affords great advantages and great opportunities to the miners and the mining industry.

Mr. George Grant: Is my hon. Friend aware that the national executive of the NUM could bring in an overtime ban only on a national matter? The reason that Langwith Colliery has been brought into this controversy is the 30 million tons of coal that are stocked. Will my hon. Friend, as a matter of urgency, put increased pressure on the CEGB to burn more coal?

Mr. Eadie: While not trying to preempt other Questions on the Order Paper, I think that within the national system there is an opportunity to burn substantial quantities of coal. I have made it clear whenever I have visited coalfields that I do not regard stocks of coal as a threat to the stability of the mining industry. I have said that coal on the ground is coal in the bank and that it will appreciate in value rather than depreciate.

Coal Mining (Worker Participation)

Mr. Ridley: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what proposals he has for worker participation in the coal mining industry.

Mr. Eadie: A Government committee is currently studying the problems of industrial democracy in the nationalised industries and any formal changes in the coal industry must await its report. There are already comprehensive arrangements for consultation at all levels within the industry and my right hon. Friend has revived, fostered and extended the pattern for joint consultations between Government, unions and Board which was begun in the coal industry examination of 1974.

Mr. Ridley: Why is the hon. Gentleman so pusillanimous? Why does he not give some pits to the miners and see whether they cannot get more money through that than through this absurd shackling structure of nationalisation and union monopoly, which is holding back their wages to a very considerable extent?

Mr. Eadie: The hon. Gentleman at one time occupied my present position on the Government Front Bench. He is not in any position to give lectures as to how to handle any industrial situation. As I have said, hon. Members can do a great disservice by making rather extravagant comments on the very delicate situation facing us. I ask the hon. Gentleman to appreciate that this is a matter for the unions to resolve. He should think about the interests of the nation rather than about trying to make party political capital.

Mr. Heffer: May I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the Labour Party's manifesto of February 1974, which clearly lays down that the Government intend to socialise the nationalised industries? [HON. MEMBERS: "What for?"] It means introducing worker participation. Will my hon. Friend tell his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Government that the committee that has been set up must not be used as an excuse for not taking speedy action once the committee reports?

Mr. Eadie: I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has said. That com-

mittee will report and it will be the Government's intention to introduce appropriate legislation. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that we have not stood still while waiting for this report. The initiatives taken on this matter by my right hon. Friend, which I have described earlier, have to some extent helped to introduce some democratisation within the industry.

Mr. Biffen: If the Under-Secretary has not stood still, will he indicate whether his movement in this matter leads him to regard favourably the National Coal Board as a suitable structure for a two-tier board?

Mr. Eadie: If the hon. Gentleman puts down a Question on that subject, I shall be happy to answer it.

Mr. Ridley: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Burmah Oil (BP Shares)

Mr. Viggers: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he has yet satisfied himself as to the most desirable and equitable course of action with regard to the disposal of the BP shares acquired by the Bank of England from the Burmah Oil Company.

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): As I told my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Cant) on 26th January, no decision has yet been taken on the disposal of these shares.—[Vol. 904, c. 26–7.]

Mr. Viggers: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that BP is believed to have a better rating than have his Government in international business——

Mr. Skeet: Of course.

Mr. Viggers: —and that the international operations of BP are being harmed by the continuation of the Government's stake, which leads people to think, incorrectly, that the Government can control this company? Is it not time that the Government influenced the Bank of England and arranged for its share to be divested?

Mr. Bean: I have nothing to add to my previous answer. In 1914 Winston Churchill promoted a Bill which gave the Government a 51 per cent. holding in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. I do not believe that the fears which the hon. Gentleman seeks to inflame are in any case real, because the experience and relationship between the Government and BP has been well understood since Mr. Churchill's Liberal days.

Mr. Speaker: It is clear that the intervention of the weekend has led to hon. Members forgetting my pronouncement about supplementary questions. If hon. Members would ask one supplementary question when called, that would be a great help.

Mr. Lane: What will the Government do to meet the acute grievances of many Burmah shareholders, including many small shareholders?

Mr. Benn: The point has been dealt with on many occasions, and I refer the hon. Gentleman to what has been said. Burmah came to the Government, and the arrangement that was made was on a perfectly fair valuation basis which Burmah was free to reject or accept.

British National Oil Corporation

Mr. Canavan: asked the Secretary of State for Energy when he next proposes to meet the Chairman of the BNOC.

Mr. Benn: I see Lord Kearton very frequently.

Mr. Canavan: Will my right hon. Friend discuss with the chairman of BNOC the meeting held in Edinburgh last week by shop stewards from the oil platform construction sites? In view of the grave concern about the continuing lack of orders—none has been placed in Britain for about nine months—will my right hon. Friend ask the Chairman of BNOC to ensure that our 51 per cent. participation means in future a greater degree of direction of oil jobs to areas that are most in need?

Mr. Benn: I think my hon. Friend knows that both my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have seen the companies concerned, and I have seen the unions and the shop stewards about this problem, which is a serious and difficult one. I do not believe that BNOC can

help in the short run, but one reason why we want a strong and powerful Corporation is to ensure that British interests are reflected over the whole range of oil policy decisions.

Mr. Budgen: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the chairman of BNOC that the OPEC cartel is cracking fast and that if the price of oil drops to below $7 a barrel, a great deal of the investment in North Sea oil becomes uneconomic?

Mr. Benn: Before the hon. Gentleman rubs his hands at the possibility that the North Sea investment might be unsuccessful, let me tell him that he is wholly wrong. Whatever the short-term position during the slump, all the long-term forecasts are that oil prices are likely to rise. North Sea investment is now pouring in at a steady rate, and our oil policy is intended to get and will succeed in our getting a 51 per cent. position on the operating committees. This investment offers this country a substantial transformation of its prospects.

Mr. Alexander Fletcher: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the chairman whether the chief executive of BNOC, temporary or otherwise, resides in Glasgow, in view of previous commitments?

Mr. Benn: The board of BNOC was appointed only last month. It is necessary for the members to be all round the United Kingdom. The chairman is often in London to discuss matters with me. I think the House knows that we have set up the Corporation's offices in Glasgow, but it will still have some work to do in London.

Mr. Gray: Will the right hon. Gentleman remind Lord Kearton that uncertainty over what 51 per cent. actually means—whether it is equity or control—may have led to the remark in today's Financial Times by the President of the Dow Commercial Company that it did not take part in the last round of licensing because the company did not know the rules, and added that, as far as he could see, it still did not know them? Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on that?

Mr. Benn: The hon. Gentleman has made it his business to repeat and amplify every anxiety that he can find in the daily newspapers, but the position is clear.
We introduced the petroleum revenue tax to make good an unforgivable gap in the legislation passed by the Conservative Government. We introduced the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Bill to provide a legal regime which allows this country to manage its oil resources. We have set up the BNOC, which is similar to what most countries outside the United States have done, and we have made it clear in the participation which we are determined to get with all the oil companies in the North Sea—[Interruption.] I hope the House will allow me to continue. We have made it clear that participation is on the basis of no better and no worse, and this is clearly understood by the companies concerned.

Mr. Lane: asked the Secretary of State for Energy whether he intends to appoint more members of the British National Oil Corporation.

Mr. John Smith: I intend to make further appointments in due course. Those already appointed, however, represent a well-balanced board, drawn from a wide area of expertise, and will be well able to initiate the process of establishing the BNOC as a fully integrated oil company.

Mr. Lane: I welcome the first few words of that reply, but on what possible grounds can the Government have faith in the technical competence of the Corporation as it is at present constituted?

Mr. Smith: Because of the expertise of some of the members of the Corporation—[Hon. MEMBERS: "In what?"]—particularly the expertise of the chairman in a wide range of industrial matters. The board will take care to appoint to its staff men who have high technical ability. Much of the criticism directed by members of the Opposition at the board has been totally misdirected. For instance, there are some very young members of the BNOC.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: Will the Minister note that great dissatisfaction is felt in Scotland because the BNOC has already opened a London suite of offices for the convenience of the England-based chief executive? When appointing other members to the board, will he make sure that the Government's promise is honoured and that there will be full de-

centralisation of decision-making to Scotland, not keeping it in London?

Mr. Smith: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has got over his disappointment at the fact that the present Government set up the BNOC and put it in Glasgow in the West of Scotland. I know that he and his colleagues wished it to go somewhere else, but the fact that it was sited in Glasgow was widely acceptable in the West of Scotland. There are three Scots on the board of the BNOC and they are making a signal contribution to its success. The hon. Gentleman's sniping arose from the fact that in this matter the Labour Government have done much more for Scotland than the Scottish National Party ever thought of.

Ms. Colquhoun: Will my hon. Friend tell the House how many women members he has appointed to the board of the BNOC?

Mr. Smith: None so far, but no doubt my right hon. Friend will bear that point in mind when he makes future appointments.

Mr. Gray: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that it is necessary to retain a certain number of staff in London because, however many may be moved to Glasgow, the main financial decisions will still be taken in London, and, as a result, it is in the interests of the people of Scotland that there should be a staff in London for this purpose?

Mr. Smith: Anyone who is concerned to make the BNOC a success will deploy staff wherever necessary. There will, of course, be staff in London as well as in Glasgow and any other part of the United Kingdom where it is desirable to have them. The important point is that the Government have acted to secure the national interest and, through the setting up of the Corporation, have benefited Scotland by putting the headquarters in Glasgow. The Scottish National Party has not yet become reconciled to this.

Mr. Viggers: Will new appointees to the BNOC board have experience of the oil industry?

Mr. Smith: That is a factor that will certainly be taken into account. Hon. Members opposite have shown a predisposition to attack every member of the


Corporation since appointment. They have ignored the wide knowledge of the oil and gas industries possessed by people like Mr. Denis Rooke, for example.

Mr. Biffen: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the composition of the British National Oil Corporation board and the salary structure proposed for senior executives.

Mr. John Smith: The board so far consists of Lord Kearton, the full-time Chairman, Lord Balogh, a part-time deputy chairman, and 10 part-time members, two of whom are civil servants. The salary of senior executives is a matter for the board.

Mr. Biffen: But does not the hon. Gentleman realise that the salary structure is of prime public importance? Since the Secretary of State has rightly gone on record as deploring any pressure and arm-twisting in relationships between Secretaries of State and the chairmen of nationalised industries, will the hon. Gentleman say whether it is his expectation that the salary structure of the chief executive and his lieutenants will correspond more approximately to the going rate of the oil industry or to the going rate of other executives of nationalised industries?

Mr. Smith: My difficulty in answering that question is that I do not wish to anticipate the proper consideration of this matter which is taking place within the British National Oil Corporation itself. No doubt, the salary structure and the salaries paid to other people in the oil industry will be one of the factors which it will take into account. The BNOC was set up to run itself in these matters, and I cannot anticipate what decisions it will reach.

Mr. Donald Stewart: As the chairman and, no doubt, the civil servants are apparently to be based in London, may we be told how many executives will be based in Scotland and in England respectively?

Mr. Smith: The hon. Gentleman is following the practice of his SNP colleagues in taking every available opportunity to snipe at the British National Oil Corporation. He cannot yet swallow the fact that the Labour Government

established its headquarters in Glasgow. We shall have officials and offices in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom wherever it is useful so to do. If the hon. Gentleman would for once recognise the important devolution of decision-taking which was made when the British National Oil Corporation headquarters were sent to Glasgow, I should listen to him with more sympathy.

Mr. Palmer: Will my hon. Friend publish the amounts of these salaries in due course, giving the information to the House, since they are of the greatest importance to the salary structure of other nationalised industries? The salaries paid to the chairmen of the electricity boards, for example, are published and well known.

Mr. Smith: I suggest that my hon. Friend should distinguish between the chairmen and their salaries and the salaries paid to members of the board and to executives. I was being questioned in particular about the executives. The Government are considering the question of publication.

Mr. Hordern: Would it not be a good idea, since there is a shortage of members of the board of the BNOC, to invite Lord Ryder to join the board to exert his mollifying influence with Lord Kearton, as he has already done elsewhere? He has, after all, considerable experience in the exploitation of natural resources.

Mr. Smith: Before the hon. Gentleman casts any more aspersions of that kind, he might look around among some of his right hon. and hon. Friends.

Mr. Biffen: But does not the Minister recognise that this is a matter of significant and central importance to the activities of the British National Oil Corporation? Will he confirm that the legislation which established the BNOC gives the Secretary of State a power of specific directive in these instances?

Mr. Smith: The powers of specific direction under the legislation are not related to any particular instance but are available to the Secretary of State in respect of any matter to which they apply.

Mr. Skeet: Answer the question.

Mr. Smith: I am answering the question.
The hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) may not be as familiar with the legislation as are some of us who took part in its passage.

Mr. Biffen: I am.

Mr. Smith: The powers of specific directive are available to the Secretary of State, but the question of salaries for these people is for the board at this stage.

Price Restraint

Mr. Mike Thomas: asked the Secretary of State for Energy whether he will seek powers to compel the electricity, gas and coal industries to participate in the Government's price restraint scheme.

Mr. Benn: No, Sir. Electricity tariffs could not be brought within the scheme without substantial public subvention. Coal prices are exempt from statutory control because of British membership of the European Community. The British Gas Corporation is voluntarily participating in the scheme in respect of domestic gas tariffs.

Mr. Thomas: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Chairman of the Electricity Council recently told the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries that he had not even been asked to enter into this scheme? Is it not a remarkable state of affairs that in many cases electricity prices have doubled over the past 12 months and a 16 per cent. increase is in train, while a wide range of private enterprise companies are willing to enter into arrangements with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection?

Mr. Benn: We considered the position of the coal and electricity industries seriously, but we concluded that they could not be brought in without jeopardising their own finances. The position is that the area boards have put in for increases to take account of higher prices, including higher oil prices.

Mr. Rost: Is not the real problem for millions of those least able to afford it that they are having to pay far more for their fuel bills than they need to pay because they are entombed in local authority housing which has been inadequately thermally insulated and they have an electric heating system which is uneconomic and inefficient?

Mr. Benn: I think the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that one of the difficulties of energy policy is that the alleged free market choice in energy is limited by the fact that people are in buildings which are not properly insulated and that they have appliances and heating systems which they did not choose. In answer to a Written Question today I am trying to set out the Government's new approach to energy policy to take account of those factors that it will take us some time to put right.

Mr. Palmer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the present price of gas is extremely artificial?

Mr. Benn: My hon. Friend knows the fuel industries very well. He will also know that one reason why gas is cheaper, relative to electricity and coal, is that the British Gas Gorporation struck a tough balance with the oil companies, and our price legislation provides that gas prices are to be related to allowable costs and not based on a comparability arrangement. In looking at long-term energy policy—which I am doing—I am bound to take into account all sorts of inheritances from the past, and the House, the Government and the community must think about that if they are to make sense of difficult investment decisions.

Electricity Generation

Mr. Hardy: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what was the volume of electricity produced by the Central Electricity Generating Board in 1975 and in 1973 and the proportion produced in both years from coal-fired and from oil-fired power stations.

Mr. Eadie: In the calendar year ending 31st December 1973, the CEGB supplied approximately 209 Terawatt-hours of electricity, of which approximately 65 per cent. was generated from coal and 24 per cent. was generated from oil.
In the calendar year ending 31st December 1975, the CEGB supplied approximately 204 Terawatt-hours of electricity, of which approximately 66 per cent was generated from coal and 20 per cent. was generated from oil.

Mr. Hardy: That information is very welcome. Since you will allow me to ask


only one supplementary question, Mr. Speaker, and as it is imperative that hon. Members opposite, who are extremely ill-informed on these matters, are properly educated, may I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to publish in the Official Report a definition of "Terawatt"?

Mr. Eadie: I shall certainly comply with my hon. Friend's request.

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: Will not my hon. Friend agree that although this 1 per cent. move is very welcome, it is essential for the future of a balanced energy policy in this country that more and more electricity generation should be based on coal, or on coal associated with nuclear fuels, so that our oil resources could be used in other directions?

Mr. Eadie: I have given answers to similar questions. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We have always said that we must make the best available use of our indigenous resources, and coal is an indigenous resource.

Domestic Heating (Elderly Persons)

Mr. Madden: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what action has been taken to combat hypothermia, particularly in warning elderly people of the need for proper heating, advice about paying fuel bills and new methods of bill payment.

Mr. Gow: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what discussions he has had with the Chairmen of the British Gas Corporation and of the Electricity Council about measures to reduce hypothermia; and how many deaths caused by hypothermia have been notified to his Department since 1st October 1975.

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Secretary of State for Energy what discussion he has had with the chairmen of the nationalised industries so as to reduce the risk of hypothermia.

Mr. Benn: With permission, I shall answer these Questions together at the end of Question Time.

Offshore Oil

Mr. Ioan Evans: asked the Secretary of State for Energy whether he will make an up to date statement on mea-

sures to be taken to ensure that offshore oil activities are developed for the full benefit of the British people.

Mr. John Smith: The Government are implementing the policies set out in the July 1974 White Paper "United Kingdom Offshore Oil and Gas Policy" (Cmnd. 5696) through the powers they have taken in the Oil Taxation Act and the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Act, through the establishment of BNOC, and through the current negotiations to secure majority State participation in existing commercial oilfields. In future licences the State will have the right to a majority share.

Mr. Evans: I welcome the steps taken by the Government to ensure a majority State holding. Will the Government keep their options open in the years ahead in respect of further reserves which may be found in the North Sea and in the Celtic Sea so that there can be complete State participation in ownership and so that the full benefits of development can come back to the people of Britain as a whole?

Mr. Smith: Like my hon. Friend, I look forward to the development of our Continental Shelf in areas which have not so far been developed, such as the Celtic Sea and other parts of our offshore areas. It will be possible for the BNOC to apply for an exclusive licence in any rounds of licensing, in which case the ownership by the State will be 100 per cent. and the return on profit will be 100 per cent. as well.

Mr. Cormack: Is the hon. Gentleman happy that these offshore installations are safeguarded? Is he in constant touch, for instance, with the Ministry of Defence?

Mr. Smith: Yes, we are in touch with the Ministry of Defence. The last announcement to the House, I think made by the Minister of State for Defence, outlined the provisions which the Government are taking through the deployment of ships and aircraft to safeguard our North Sea oil resources.

Mr. John Garrett: Can my hon. Friend confirm that the manager of one company has refused to enter into negotiations with the British Government for a participation agreement?

Mr. Smith: We have had communications from some companies stating that they are not yet prepared to enter into discussions in detail with the Government, but these difficulties will be overcome and I am confident that we shall reach satisfactory agreements with the companies concerned.

Mr. Tim Renton: Do the Secretary of State's comments earlier this afternoon mean that he is reneging on the commitment of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that participation will be voluntary and that he is now stating that it will be compulsory?

Mr. Smith: Nothing that my right hon. Friend said could possibly bear that interpretation. The hon. Gentleman should give up that sort of mischief-making.

Mr. Leadbitter: My hon. Friend will know that a special element in offshore activities is the oil rig construction industry. Is he not aware that in my constituency a few days ago 2,000 people were notified that about 1,300 of them would lose their jobs in July because of the lack of orders? Is he further aware that the men appreciate the work of himself and the Secretary of State in attempting to get some sort of rationale working here in order that the future of the yard can be determined? Nevertheless——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has already asked two supplementaries. Perhaps he will wait for the answers to them.

Mr. Leadbitter: rose——

Mr. Speaker: I am asking the hon. Gentleman to appreciate that he has had his rations.

Mr. Smith: I am aware of the serious nature of the problem to which my hon. Friend has referred. I think his constituents must be aware of the very diligent way in which he has pursued their interests with the Department.
We expect that there will be a number of further platform orders this year. Certainly the yard in my hon. Friend's constituency is well placed, on the basis of past productivity and excellent labour relations, to put in a bid for such orders as are available.

Fuel Pricing (Low-tariff Consumers)

Mr. Hannam: asked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will hold consultations with the CEGB and the Gas Council concerning the effect of fuel pricing policies on low-tariff consumers.

Mr. Benn: I keep in contact as appropriate with the gas and electricity industries about all important matters of pricing policy.

Mr. Hannam: Will the Secretary of State discuss with the Chairman of the Gas Council the tilting of tariffs against the small consumer—for example, charging 20p a therm to the consumer of only 100 therms a year, compared with a reduction to something like 12½p per therm for the larger consumer of 1,600 therms?

Mr. Benn: As the House knows, the Government asked officials to look into the problems of tariffs and the possibility of tilting tariffs in favour of small consumers. We are publishing the results of those studies—as it happens, they will be published today—and I hope that, when the hon. Member and others who have knowledge and expertise in these matters have an opportunity to look at them, they will see at least the logic which lies behind the Government's thinking. I hope also that the paper which we are publishing today will trigger off some public discussion about these matters, which must be looked at by the Government from time to time. I hope that this will be helpful.

Mr. Mike Thomas: My right hon. Friend can take it that many of us welcome his decision to publish material of this sort, but will he at the same time make clear that he is prepared to stand up to the bureaucrats in these nationalised industries on behalf of the voters who pay the bills and who put him here?

Mr. Benn: If it were as simple as that, energy policy would be very simple. When he looks at the arguments, my hon. Friend will, I think, find—this will emerge from the study published today—that, for example, not all poor consumers are small consumers——

Mr. Mike Thomas: Most are.

Mr. Benn: If he looks at the paper which we are publishing, I think that my hon. Friend will find that it would be possible to take a penny or two off the tariffs of some poor consumers but at the expense of a very substantial increase for those who live in all-electric homes. This is a more complex matter than my hon. Friend may yet recognise, and, although I should welcome his comments, since the Government always have an open mind on all these matters, I think that he should see the figures before reaching a final view.

Mr. Heffer: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider the matter from the point of view of those living in all-electric homes? In my constituency, for example, I am finding old people with bills of about £150 a quarter, which is far too high. When the material is published, will the Government follow it up by taking action to assist consumers of that kind in particular, who are really in a very bad way?

Mr. Benn: I said in an earlier answer, and I say again to my hon. Friend now, that these are difficult questions because people do not always have control over the fuel which they burn since they are put into flats where there is only one fuel available to them. I shall be making a statement at the end of Question Time today dealing with one aspect of this matter. But I think that the adjustment to higher tariffs which flowed from the OPEC increases is an inevitable difficulty, and we are trying to look at the problems as they develop with a reasonable degree of good will and sensitivity.

Oral Answers to Questions — OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

Bangladesh

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Minister for Overseas Development what technical and other assistance he has given to the Bangladesh Government with regard to the efficient storage of the current surplus rice crop.

The Minister for Overseas Development (Mr. Reg Prentice): As I said in a written reply to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) on 9th February, I made an offer to provide and air-freight to Bangladesh grain fumigant and gas-proof sheeting which World Food Pro-

gramme officials report to be urgently required. This offer has now been accepted, and we are arranging for the despatch of these materials as quickly as possible.—[Vol. 905, c. 11.]

Mr. Stonehouse: May we know also what technical assistance is being provided to the Bangladesh authorities, and what proportion of the £54 million aid programme is being spent on wholesaling and other facilities?

Mr. Prentice: I need notice to give a precise answer to my right hon. Friend's second question, and I shall write to him about it. We have offered to provide two teams of experts in relation to this matter, one to advise on the rehabilitation of grain storage facilities—that offer has been accepted and arrangements have been made for them to go out—and the other to advise on bulk transportation of grain, which is a slightly longer-term problem on which I think we may be able to help. This effort is being co-ordinated, of course, with the World Food Programme and other donor countries.

Mr. Skinner: Will my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons, relatively speaking, why the position in Bangladesh has been worsened is the fact that the Crown Agents, for which also he is responsible, invested sums of money in the Bangladesh bank for which the right hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Stonehouse) had certain responsibilities, so that——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is not allowed to cast any reflection on any right hon. or hon. Member.

Mr. Skinner: We have debated this.

Mr. Speaker: We may well have debated it, but personal reflections are not in order.

Mr. Stonehouse: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Could it be pointed out that the references——

Mr. Speaker: Order. I stopped that matter quickly.

Overseas Aid

Mr. Canavan: asked the Minister for Overseas Development whether any further reduction is planned in the Government's spending on overseas aid.

Mr. Prentice: The White Paper on Public Expenditure to 1979–80 will be published later this week and I cannot anticipate the information in it.

Mr. Canavan: As our economic difficulties, although severe, are as nothing compared with the difficulties being faced by the poorest countries in the world, will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that he will resist any further attempts by the Treasury to reduce his already inadequate budget for overseas aid spending? Will my right hon. Friend indicate when he expects to reach the United Nations target figure of 0·7 per cent. of our GNP?

Mr. Prentice: I agree with the general sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend. I cannot anticipate the figures which will become public later this week. We have accepted the UN target, but we have said that the date on which we reach it must depend on our economic recovery. I am sure that I can rely on hon. Members on both sides of the House to explain to the wider public the need for maintaining the aid programme and expanding it in the years ahead, both on moral grounds and on grounds of long-term self-interest.

Mr. Grylls: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that in the light of the dramas taking place in Angola, dramas which are threatenting other parts of Africa, it is necessary for him to continue to do his best to maintain the British aid programme in East Africa, and especially the new programme of rural development aid in Tanzania, which everyone concerned believes to be of great importance?

Mr. Prentice: We have a substantial programme in East Africa, including, I am glad to say, a substantial programme building up in Tanzania. I think that the hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the importance of the East African countries not only because of what is happening in Angola but because of the long-term economic interests of the people in those countries.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: asked the Minister for Overseas Development what was the total amount of overseas aid distributed by Her Majesty's Government in the most recent year for which figures are available; and by what percentage this

exceeds or is less than the total for two and four years previously, respectively, at constant prices.

Mr. Prentice: Net aid disbursements in the financial year 1974–75 were £323·9 million against £252·6 million in 1972–73 and £197·5 million in 1970–71. In constant prices 1974–75 expenditure represents a decrease of 11·1 per cent. from 1972–73 and an increase of 3 per cent. over 1970–71.

Mr. Taylor: Is it the Government's policy that in the next few years the real value of aid should increase or decrease?

Mr. Prentice: I cannot anticipate the public expenditure figures which will be published later this week. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find adequate information in the White Paper when it is published.

Mr. Ioan Evans: Are not the figures rather disappointing when as a party we are committed to increasing expenditure to assist development areas? In spite of the difficult economic situation through which we are passing, will my right hon. Friend have discussions with his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that if there are to be cuts in public expenditure, the overseas development programme will be exempt and that it will be increased in the years ahead?

Mr. Prentice: I have been discussing these matters with my colleagues. Indeed, the whole Government have been discussing the public expenditure programme. The White Paper will be published later this week. In general, I think that we should consider our performance in recent years, and I think I may say our likely performance in future years, without any sense of complacency, recognising that neither we nor any other Western donors are anywhere near achieving the modest target of the United Nations General Assembly.

Sierra Leone (Experimental Rice Farm)

Mr. Whitehead: asked the Minister for Overseas Development what are the reasons for the delay in appointing rice agronomists to the experimental rice farm at Rokupr, Sierra Leone, under funds already earmarked by his Department for this purpose.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Overseas Development (Mr. John Grant): Scientists of the specialisation required for these two posts are few, but since the agreement with the West Africa Rice Development Association was concluded in January 1975 one post has been filled and I expect that the second will be filled shortly.

Mr. Whitehead: I am glad to hear that. I must apologise for the mis-spelling on the Order Paper of the Rice Agency of Rokupr by one letter. Nevertheless, does my hon. Friend agree that the delay of two years in filling these posts on the ground that British subjects could not be found for them—that is what was alleged to myself and other hon. Members on our visit—vitiates the rather generous aid that was earmarked and that some of the aid must have lost its real value due to the delay?

Mr. Grant: I think that that is an over-simplification of what happened. From the time that the original funds were earmarked there was difficulty, first, in identifying suitable projects and, secondly, in agreeing on the coverage of local costs. We eventually agreed to make an exceptional payment in that respect. It was subsequent to that that we ran into the further difficulty of finding specialised staff.

Mr. Peter Mills: Will the Minister bear in mind that what he has said is very unsatisfactory? It appears from the private inquiries that I have made in this country that private consultants such as Lugg and Gould have people available. There is even a Canadian man who is suitable for the job. It is very much regretted and resented that the Government have delayed in making an appointment.

Mr. Grant: I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman's comments. As far as I am aware, he has not been in touch with us to give us the information which he has just supplied. I shall consider what he has said, but it does not tally with the information that I have.

World Food Conference (Recommendations)

Mr. Hooky: asked the Minister of Overseas Development what progress is being made to put into effect the three

major recommendations of the World Food Conference—that is, an International Fund of Agricultural Development, a system of world food stocks and a ministerial level World Food Council.

Mr. John Grant: The World Food Council has been established and the United Kingdom is a member of it. The first meeting of Ministers took place in June 1975. The second meeting is expected to be held in mid-June this year. The question of a system of world food stocks is primarily the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This subject is under consideration in a number of international fora, in all of which we are playing an active part. As regards the International Fund for Agricultural Development, it is hoped that a meeting under the auspices of the United Nations will be held to inaugurate the fund in May of this year.

Mr. Hooky: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that information. Will he say what contribution has been made by the European Economic Community to the International Fund and the food stock problem?

Mr. Grant: Agreement on the principle of EEC participation has not yet been reached. We support the International Fund for Agricultural Development and we have said that we shall contribute. We are working within the Community in the hope that it will agree with our approach. We are also working within the Community to arrive at a suitable formula for world food stocks.

Mrs. Dunwoody: Will my hon. Friend try again with the Communty rather more urgently? He will be aware that the present agricultural system is contributing to the number of food aid stocks and that there has been a decision to limit the amount which shall be given in food aid to under-developed countries. Will he make a greater effort to get his hands on the surpluses for practical reasons?

Mr. Grant: My right hon. Friend has been listening to my hon. Friend's supplementary question, and I am sure that when he goes to the next meeting of the Development Ministers, which we hope will not be very long from now, he wil


bear in mind what she has said and press urgently for this development.

Mr. Douglas-Mann: Will my hon. Friend give an assurance that the proposal for world food stocks is receiving vigorous support from the Government and that the Government will be supporting the entire list of proposed commodities for such stocks?

Mr. Grant: No, I cannot give my hon. Friend the assurance that we shall be supporting the entire list. The Government believe that a selective approach is necessary, but in the various international fora we shall be pursuing vigorously—in fact, we are already doing so—the initiative outlined by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at Kingston, Jamaica.

Angola

Mr. Ronald Bell: asked the Minister for Overseas Development what evidence he has that there is a leakage of funds from recipient countries under the arrangements in the Lomé Convention to Communist organisations in Angola; whether he can quantify the leakage; and what actions he proposes to take in consequence.

Mr. Prentice: No funds have been disbursed and therefore the question of a leakage does not arise.

Mr. Bell: Even if the disbursements cannot be directly traced to funds from this country, is it not disturbing to the citizens of this heavily taxed country that territories receiving public money from Britain are also known to be giving financial aid or arms aid to the MPLA in Angola?

Mr. Prentice: The hon. and learned Gentleman began by talking about funds disbursed under the Lomé Convention, of which there have not yet been any. If the hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about British aid in general, I must make it clear that under this Government and under previous Governments British aid has gone to a wide range of countries. We do not require control of their foreign policy to make sure that they receive it. Countries with Governments of various political outlooks have received aid, and this is how it should be. We do not expect the sort

of control which the hon. and learned Gentleman seems to be suggesting.

Mr. Whitehead: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should not overlook the need for the new Government of Angola, as soon as it is established and if it is established, to become a member of the Lomé Convention? Does my right hon. Friend agree that to snipe at it constantly will drive the country further into the hands of the Russians and Cubans?

Mr. Prentice: Angola, geographically, will be eligible to apply for membership of the Lomé Convention. It is too early to say whether it will do so and what the reaction will be. That is a matter that will have to be considered if and when the application is made.

Mr. Cormack: Does not the right hon. Gentleman view with extreme alarm the activities of the Russians and Cubans in Angola? On behalf of the Government, will he condemn this way of aiding other countries?

Mr. Prentice: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has made his attitude and the Government's attitude quite clear. The hon. Gentleman has raised a matter which does not arise from the Question.

DOMESTIC HEATING (ELDERLY PERSONS)

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn): With permission, I shall now answer Questions Nos. 11, 20 and 37.
The Government recognised last summer that many of the poorer consumers would face serious problems in adjusting their budgets to cope with the very much higher fuel bills that would reach them this winter. I discussed this problem with the electricity and gas supply industries then, and they have been most helpful and sensitive in their handling of this matter. As hon. Members will know, there are standing liaison arrangements whereby the boards identify cases of potential hardship for handling by the social services departments and distinguish them from those other cases where payment, though difficult, does not constitute


hardship. In particular the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the gas and electricity authorities have worked out arrangements which will help to avoid disconnections for people entitled to supplementary benefit, and there have been discussions with the citizens advice bureaux about advice to those in difficulties.
The House will wish to express appreciation for the initiatives which the industries, the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the welfare agencies have taken in these matters.
The recent cold spell has, however, prompted special concern about the problems of one group in particular—the older people who are so vulnerable to extreme cold, but who might be led by a combination of anxiety and a sense of public responsibility into undue economies which might hazard their health or life.
I have recently discussed these problems with the industries again. I find that the number of householders consisting solely of pensioners who have been disconnected by either industry in the whole of England and Wales is tiny. However, in addition there are very many old people who are worried about their ability to pay promptly and fear of disconnection.
Clearly in the long run fuel bills must be paid by one means or another. But to relieve one of the anxieties of the aged for the time being I have asked the industries to suspend between now and the beginning of June, the disconnections of households which can show that all the members in receipt of income are pensioners over retirement pensionable age. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has asked the Scottish electricity boards to make similar arrangements.
This will give the industries and the pensioners an opportunity to work out practicable methods of payment. At the same time I have asked my noble Friend Lord Lovell-Davis to undertake an informal review of the payment and collection arrangements in conjunction with the gas and electricity industries and the others and to report on any further procedures which may be desirable, including methods of making the available facilities more widely known and used. This review and the submissions made in the course

of it, which I intend to make public, will be complementary to the report which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection has requested the National Consumer Council to make on the impact of fuel costs on the budgets of low income households.
These arrangements, within a very limited scale, will not solve the hardship problems of consumers in other groups, but I am confident that the public at large will recognised the special case for relieving old people of some of their problems and anxieties and that the industries and the social welfare agencies will continue to deal sympathetically and sensitively with the problems of other consumers for whom hardship could arise.
These new arrangements which I have asked the boards to introduce are designed to help pensioners and give them a little extra time to adjust to the present difficult situation.

Mr. Madden: Would my right hon. Friend accept the undoubted welcome that his statement will receive throughout the country? However, is he satisfied with the co-ordination arrangements among Government Departments with responsibilities in these matters? What steps will be taken to give those most at risk the information contained in this statement, since many have little contact with neighbours or access to the media? What other measures which are important to the overall problem are being pursued as a matter of urgency?

Mr. Benn: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said and for his own efforts in this direction. The co-ordination is going on: there are continual contacts about this matter. As for the access of those concerned to this information, we shall do all we can to see that this statement is widely reported. Of course, if the fear of disconnection is lifted, that is the most important thing. Many of the matters to which my hon. Friend refers will be considered by Lord Lovell-Davis as well as in the National Consumer Council study.

Mr. Gow: I also welcome the right hon. Gentleman's statement. How many deaths due to hypothermia have been notified to his Department since 1st October last? When future gas and electricity bills are sent out, could they contain the


statement that where pensioners are the sole occupiers of a consuming household, there will be no disconnection until June?

Mr. Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am afraid that I cannot answer his question about hypothermia cases, which are not confined to old people or to the winter and which cannot all be attributed by any means to fuel bills. But I hope to do at least as well as the hon. Gentleman would like by ensuring that all engineers who would conduct disconnections are aware of what I have said. Over the last few months, the evidence is that in whole areas of the country, to the knowledge of the boards, no pensioners are being disconnected at the moment. But this statement will lift anxiety from many others.

Mr. Ridsdale: While one welcomes the right hon. Gentleman's proposals, would he examine the fact that some pensioners are having to be asked for maintenance charges for gas leaks and that £7 or £8 for such bills is a high charge for a pensioner?

Mr. Benn: I am aware that there is a number of difficulties, including the report, which is now being examined, that charges are made for the emptying of gas meters which may fill before the end of the quarter. One of the reasons that I have asked Lord Lovell-Davis to look into this matter in conjunction with the industries is that I thought that we might pick up some of these difficulties as a byproduct of such a review.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: Will my right hon. Friend consult the Secretary of State for the Environment about the possibility of providing special Government assistance to local housing authorities which own old people's bungalows and flats, where work on insulation or on providing alternative heating systems would greatly reduce the dangers of hypothermia?

Mr. Benn: I appreciate what my hon. Friend says. Nothing that I have said indicates that I do not take this matter seriously. In the long term—it must necessarily be in the long term—we shall aim to have houses and industrial buildings which are properly insulated but this will take sometime. I also hope to get houses with flues built again, so that people can burn coal in their homes, which has not been possible in some accommodation

built in recent years. But these are mid-to long-term problems which we need to tackle. I hope that what I have done this winter will provide some immediate relief of anxiety.

Mr. Kilfedder: The right hon. Gentleman deserves the greatest praise for his thoughtful action. Will his statement apply to Northern Ireland, where electricity costs are higher? So far as I know, weekly benefit for heating for old-age pensioners is based on an average throughout the year, but old people cannot budget, especially with inflation, which means that the money that they are supposed to save to pay higher fuel bills just is not there. Would he examine that matter as well?

Mr. Benn: I have consulted the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland before making this statement, although I should not like to announce on his behalf the exact implications of what I have said for Northern Ireland. But I am well aware of the hon. Member's point about budgets, that it is difficult, if a family have or a person has planned expenditure on energy over a number of years, to face a sudden increase of this magnitude. Many people still do not know the cost of using appliances that they may have had for many years. Providing time for adjustment, as well as sensitivity in handling these matters, seems to me the most useful thing to be done in the interim.

Mr. Atkinson: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that this situation shows the weakness of withdrawing subsidies from essential services in a Welfare State? Would not he also agree that if we are to allocate the resources according to need, his position contradicts the Government's decision not to go ahead with the idea of paying a bonus to pensioners this month?

Mr. Benn: I am not able to add to what has been said already on the latter point of my hon. Friend's question. As for the issue of subsidies, when energy costs rise and when the saving of energy is all-important, short, medium and long term, it is, perhaps, better that the Government should make such help as may be needed available in cases where that need can be established. It is on that basis that we have been proceeding.
I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend has said, namely that the combination of a return to economic pricing and an increase in fuel costs has made things difficult. There is no point in looking at these problems as if they were just profit and loss accountancy matters without having regard to the human factors that must be taken into account.

Mr. Biffen: Would the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the widespread welcome for his statement derives from the fact that the problem has excited great concern in all parts of the House? Will he further accept that there will be great anxiety that the review to be carried out by Lord Lovell-Davis should proceed with the utmost expedition? Will he further acknowledge that we perfectly appreciate that the main concern of his statement is to enable the elderly to have time to adjust to the transformed fuel charge situation and we welcome the fact that this is not being used as an excuse to retreat from the objective of economic pricing for the nationalised industries?

Mr. Benn: This is the first time that I have had the opportunity of replying to a supplementary question from the hon. Gentleman since he was appointed to his Front Bench position. I am grateful for what he has said. I stress that my statement is a modest one. I do not want anyone to be under any misapprehension about that. No doubt on other occasions the complex matters of energy pricing will be discussed. I look forward to debating such matters with the hon. Gentleman in a rather more serious mood than has sometimes been possible with his colleagues.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot debate this matter now. The Minister did not make a statement; he answered Questions.

NORTHERN IRELAND

Rev. Ian Paisley: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the weekend violence in Northern Ireland.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for

Northern Ireland, who is still in Belfast, tells me that between 8 a.m. on Thursday 12th February and this morning there were in all 87 shooting incidents and 17 bomb explosions in Northern Ireland. Eight people were killed, including a Reserve policeman, and 40 injured, including seven members of the security forces. Most of the violence was concentrated in areas of Belfast and Londonderry where there were also a number of street disturbances involving young hooligans. As a result there was serious damage to property, especially in Londonderry. Twice Army posts were attacked by home-made mortars. On both occasions surrounding property was damaged. The property of both communities suffered.
Throughout the period the security forces maintained a high level of activity to prevent violence. They achieved considerable success against those responsible for what occurred. No fewer than 116 people have been charged so far with a variety of offences. On more than a dozen occasions suspected gunmen or bombers were caught red handed. While the security forces have been the targets for many of the attacks, the real sufferers have been the civilian population, particularly those living in the city of Londonderry and North and West Belfast.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Would the Minister of State not agree that when such violence is taking place in Northern Ireland it is imperative for a Minister of the Crown to be present in Northern Ireland, especially during the weekend when it was expected that there would be such a level of violence? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Northern Ireland Office put out a statement on Saturday saying that the Secretary of State was present in Northern Ireland but that afterwards, when my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson) and I visited Stormont Castle, we were told that the Secretary of State had gone home on Saturday morning? Will the right hon. Gentleman assure us that in future, instead of a young civil servant being in charge of Northern Ireland, a Minister of the Crown will be present at the weekend?

Mr. Orme: I feel that the House is entitled to an explanation in answer to


what the hon. Member has said. The facts are as follows: my right hon. Friend was in Northern Ireland on Friday morning, when he held a security conference. On Friday afternoon he went out on patrol with the Army in West Belfast. On Friday evening he was on patrol with the UDR in Belfast. He was discussing the security situation again on Saturday morning. He left Northern Ireland at midday and returned to England, still as the duty Minister, having seen the security forces and been reassured of what the position really was.
My right hon. Friend returned to Northern Ireland yesterday lunchtime. He held a security meeting with the Chief of Staff and GOC yesterday evening. He had a security conference this morning in Belfast. I must say to the hon. Gentleman and those of his friends who have been pressing to see the Secretary of State on matters which could have been dealt with by the security forces that they have not been helping the situation in the past few days.
It is not in the best interests of the House for the hon. Gentleman to go to Stormont Castle, as he did at 1.30 a.m. on Sunday, on a matter that could have been dealt with in the normal way, and then to harangue a young civil servant. No other United Kingdom Ministers have to put up with what Northern Ireland Ministers have to put up with from certain hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies. If these hon. Members want to help the situation they might take that into account.

Mr. Neave: The Minister of State has referred to the high level of activity of the security forces during the last few hours. Will he tell the House what is the Government's position with regard to the so-called Provisional cease-fire? Does this still affect the rôle and tactics of the security forces, who are increasingly coming under fire? Do the Government agree with Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien in his weekend statement that a democratic State should never concede to terrorist demands and that mediation simply leads to an enhancement of the terrorists' prestige and encourages them?

Mr. Orme: The Government have never conceded to terrorism nor do they

intend to do so. We have looked for a political solution and will continue to do so. That rather links with the hon. Gentleman's question about the ceasefire. The security forces are in a position to operate in any manner in which they desire to maintain security and law and order in Northern Ireland. That has been the position in the past few days and will remain so.

Mr. Corbett: Would my right hon. Friend agree that it is quite disgraceful for the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) or any other hon. Member of this House to seek to use a difficult security situation in Northern Ireland for petty and cheap gain? Would my right hon. Friend confirm that the hon. Member and his friends would be far better employed helping the real interests of the people of Northern Ireland by seeking to achieve a sensible political solution?

Mr. Orme: I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. The answer to the second part of his question is in the affirmative. I must tell the House that the sort of representations that have been made to the Secretary of State in the last few days are of a kind that could have been dealt with in the normal manner. The security forces are available. The Secretary of State can be informed. There is nothing that could not have been dealt with. The only result of the action of the hon. Member and his friends has been to make life more difficult for Ministers. In present circumstances this is reprehensible.

Mr. Thorpe: Is the Minister aware that it is appalling to suggest that the absence or incidence of violence in the Province is occasioned by the physical presence or absence of the Secretary of State—although there are certain people whose permanent absence from Northern Ireland would do a tremendous amount to relieve the tension? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that those who genuinely deplore acts of violence and who have never played any part in inciting them would make their greatest contribution by trying to bring all sections of the community together and bringing about genuine political co-operation? That is now in the hands of the majority of the people if they wish to do it.

Mr. Orme: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the sentiments he has expressed. The House is aware that Ministers, and my right hon. Friend in particular, have been under considerable pressure. In the past two years my right hon. Friend probably has worked more weekends than any other Minister. Sometimes he has been on call day in and day out and has worked beyond the normal call of duty. Ministers are on immediate call. If they are not in Northern Ireland, aircraft are available to take them out. It is very strange that we never get these pressures from the RUC or the security forces or from many other politicians in Northern Ireland. They come from just a few.

Mr. Carson: I should like to express my deep sympathy to the relatives of my three constituents who were brutally murdered in Ligoniel last night.
Is the Minister aware that I contacted the police on several occasions on Friday and they said that there was a state of emergency? I contacted the Army, and the Army said that it had not the manpower to deal with the situation. A church in my constituency was left to burn because the fire brigade was not allowed to put it out. One hundred and thirty people employed by a large factory are out of work today because the security forces could not deal with the situation. Many homes have been bombed and wrecked and people have had to leave their homes. Many vehicles have been hijacked and burned. North Belfast was held to ransom by the IRA for three days.
It is deplorable that the Secretary of State should instruct and authorise civil servants to tell lies on his behalf—[HoN. MEMBERS: "Oh".]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must withdraw any suggestion that the Secretary of State has instructed people to tell lies.

Mr. Carson: With great respect to you, Mr. Speaker, and with honesty to my constituency and the people in North Belfast who have suffered so much, I have no intention of withdrawing—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is speaking with feeling and considerable emotion, but he must withdraw his statement.

Mr. Carson: I am sorry, but I cannot withdraw, because it was a question of deliberate lies on behalf of the Secretary of State—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The troubles we are discussing are serious enough without our running away from parliamentary procedure. I give the hon. Gentleman another opportunity to withdraw his statement.

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Carson: I will submit to you, Mr. Speaker, and say that misinformation was given to me. That is as much as I can do—

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The House must bear in mind the tension under which the hon. Gentleman is speaking, as with anyone connected with Northern Ireland. I gather from what the hon. Gentleman has said that he is withdrawing his statement that lies were told.

Mr. Carson: I am very grateful to you, Mr. Speaker; I appreciate it.
Is the Minister aware that in the past three weeks the Secretary of State met the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) a considerable number of times over the Stagg affair, yet when my constituency is burned and my constituents die and the place is held to ransom by the IRA the Secretary of State refuses to meet us, and the Army and the police say that they cannot deal with the situation?

Mr. Orme: I shall leave the House to judge the hon. Gentleman's statements against the record and background of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. It would perhaps be an interesting exercise to put in the Library a document showing the number of times that the Secretary of State and other Ministers have met the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. I appreciate his feelings about the deaths which occurred in his constituency last night. However, to say that the situation is due to the security forces not being in control, that the security forces are not operating in a correct manner and have not the necessary facilities, is completely untrue. There is not a vestige of truth in that.

Rev. Ian Paisley: The people who jeered to day were not burying their constituents at the weekend.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short business statement.
Following my statement last Thursday, the House will wish to know that the business for this week has been rearranged as follows:
TUESDAY 17TH FEBRUARY—Until about 7 p.m. motion relating to the proceedings at the end of the Supply debate on Wednesday 11th February.
Second Reading of the Trustee Savings Banks Bill [Lords].
At the end of Thursday 19th February—at 10 p.m.—Resumed debate on the motion relating to the Landlord and Tenant Regulations.
The business on Monday 23rd February will now be:
Second Reading of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.
Motion on EEC Documents R/2662/75 and R/2663/75 on Nuclear Safety.

QUESTIONS TO THE PRIME MINISTER (MR. SPEAKER'S STATEMENT)

Mr. Speaker: I have been giving further thought to the exchanges which took place last Thursday on the subject of Prime Minister's Questions. In particular, I have refreshed my memory of the recommendations made in 1972 by the Select Committee on Parliamentary Questions—and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) for drawing my attention to that matter.
The Select Committee was concerned about the extent to which what it called "vague Questions" and what I ventured to describe last Thursday as "coat hooks" were displacing on the Order Paper Questions genuinely concerned with the Prime Miinster's responsibilities. It considered whether there should be a

stricter application of the rules of relevance. It stated:
For the reason that supplementary questions frequently do go wider than answers theoretically permit—that is to say, that a supplementary question cannot be ruled out of order until it has been asked and that to refuse a Minister a reply would not normally be reasonable—your Committee do not believe that the Chair should be asked to apply different standards to supplementary questions to the Prime Minister than are applied to other supplementary questions".
The House will know that I have already had occasion to intervene when supplementary questions to other Ministers have appeared to become over-lengthy or divorced from the substance of the original Question, and I think that the House has supported me in this. I would certainly consider excessively long supplementary questions to the Prime Minister to be just as undesirable as they would be to any other Minister. As regards their content, although I fully recognise the desire of hon. Members to ask the most searching questions of the Prime Minister, I shall continue to bear in mind the wise words of the Select Committee.

Mr. Peyton: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for that very helpful statement, which no doubt will be invaluable as guidance to my right hon. and hon. Friends. However, may I ask you to make it clear that your reasonable comments on the length of questions should apply with equal force to answers, which sometimes drag on for an intolerable time?

Mr. Speaker: I have on two occasions made appeals to Ministers to be brief in their replies, as I have appealed to hon. Members to be brief in their questions. I hope that all Ministers, present or absent, will read what I have said.

Mr. Heffer: May I also thank you, Mr. Speaker, as I raised the matter. May I ask that the flexibility in accordance with the Select Committee's proposals which you have described will be a genuine flexibility, otherwise we could be in a position where the Prime Minister is asked whether he is going to Huyton and the hon. Member asking the Question might follow it up by asking whether the Prime Minister will look at the unemployment problem there? Unemployment affects not only Huyton but the whole country, so the Question to the Prime Minister could go much wider. I hope that there will


be that sort of flexibility, otherwise it will be quite ridiculous for hon. Members even to ask the Prime Minister what he was doing in Huyton.

Mr. Speaker: It might be in any case. This is a matter for common sense and judgment at the time. I will do my best.

Mr. Bidwell: Ministers do not often dislike Questions that ask them to go somewhere. It will be quite wrong to deny the Prime Minister the pleasure of having such a Question put to him. It has been known for people very close to Ministers to see that the kind of Questions they like appear on the Order Paper.

Mr. Speaker: There is a great deal in what the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell) says. It depends where a Minister is asked to go.

Mr. Hordern: Surely it is not just a question of the length of supplementary questions or the replies given by the Prime Minister. If supplementary questions are to have some pertinence to the original Question, does it not follow that the Prime Minister's answers must relate to either the original or the supplementary question?

Mr. Speaker: That is a fair point. Let me leave the House in no doubt on this matter. Supplementary questions must, in some way, be related to the Question on the Order Paper. Hon. Members must use their ingenuity. They are not short of that.

Mr. Lawson: Will you agree, Mr. Speaker, that supplementary questions from other hon. Members can be related to the Prime Minister's reply to the first supplementary question and need not therefore have any connection whatsoever with the Question on the Order Paper?

Mr. Speaker: We are getting into the realms of higher mathematics at which I was never any good.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE BILL (PROCEEDINGS)

Miss Richardson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to raise with you the events of last Friday afternoon, a few minutes before 4 o'clock, at the conclusion of the debate on the Domestic

Violence Bill. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Law Officers' Department had sat down, after replying to the debate, a fraction before 4 o'clock. Your Deputy rose to put the Question as the clocks, from what we could see, swung over to 4 o'clock and as the first of the four chimes of Big Ben was striking.
As Mr. Deputy Speaker was putting the Question, he interrupted himself to call the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) to speak, and my Bill was thereby talked out. I have some witnesses who say that the digital clock in front of you also moved to 4 o'clock when the Question was being put.
I cannot see why my Bill was ruled out in this way. It is bad enough to have Bills talked out in the proper manner—though that system is incomprehensible to the public—but to have it talked out by mistake makes an absolute mockery of this House. I would like your ruling on the matter.

Mr. Speaker: Having often presided at 4 o'clock on Friday afternoons, I understand the frustration of hon. Members when their measures are lost because one hon. Member claims his inalienable right to stand in his place if he wishes to object to a Bill.
The rule regarding the stage at which a Question is fully put—and Mr. Deputy Speaker had not fully put the Question when the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) rose to seek to catch his eye—is that until the occupant of the Chair has collected the voices the Question is still before the House.
Since the hon. Member rose in his place, Mr. Deputy Speaker did what anyone else would have done—certainly what I would have done—and called him to speak. Until the voices are collected, the rights of minorities in this House—unpopular though they may be—allow one hon. Member to get up in his place and thus cause difficulties.

Miss Richardson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand what you have said and if that had happened before 4 o'clock, I could have had no complaints. I might not have liked it, but I would have had no complaint. My argument is that the clock said 4 p.m.


and the first chime of Big Ben had struck—after all the bits that go before—which I gather is Greenwich Mean Time and is used by navigational aids all over the world. That happened when Mr. Deputy Speaker was on his feet and had begun to put the Question. In my submission, he therefore had no occasion to call the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West to speak, since it was then 4 o'clock.

Mr. Speaker: It is clear from Hansard that Mr. Deputy Speaker had begun to put the Question before 4 o'clock, but at the time the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West rose, Mr. Deputy Speaker had not gone so far as to take the voices. I can only rule that we are unable to get round this matter, disappointing and frustrating though it is for the hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson). Mr. Deputy Speaker did what anyone else who had been in the Chair would have done in the circumstances. I fear that the hon. Lady can only seek to get her Bill through at another time.

Mr. Whitehead: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not wish to challenge your ruling, though you will appreciate the indignation felt by many hon. Members at what happened to the Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Miss Richardson). It was not opposed in any speech by any hon. Member, nor did any hon. Member seek to shout "Object" at 4 o'clock.
It would be in the interests of the House if we investigated a method of ensuring that the clock used by Mr. Deputy Speaker—which apparently told a different time from the clocks used by hon. Members—could be synchronised with another clock which could be seen by hon. Members.
It may be possible to quote a precedent for this situation. On 16th June 1972, a Bill of my own fell in a somewhat similar way, between two votes at the hour of 4 o'clock, an hon. Member having risen in his place so that the Question could not be put. On that occasion, the matter was referred to the Select Committee on Procedure and, at a later stage, the Government moved a business motion allowing the Question to be put forthwith, though opposed, after

10 o'clock. I realise that it is a matter for the Government and the usual channels, but I hope that it might be something you could take up with them.

Mr. Speaker: Arrangements are being made to see whether the flashing light might be installed on both sides of the Table to indicate the interruption of business. The same procedure applies at 10 o'clock at night. The Chief Whip keeps a watch because he has to move the Closure if an hon. Member is on his feet at 10 o'clock. The same applies on Friday at 4 o'clock. When the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West stood up, it was open to the hon. Member for Barking to move the Closure, although I do not think that she would have obtained it because the debate was late in starting.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Was it in order, when Mr. Deputy Speaker was on his feet putting a procedural motion, for the hon. and learned Member for Thanet West (Mr. Rees-Davies) to interrupt him and to delay the business as he did?

Mr. Speaker: Yes, he was in order. That has been done many times. I regret to tell the House that I have done it myself in days past.

Mr. John Mendelson: Those hon. and right hon. Members who are frequently here at 4 o'clock on Friday know that it would be unsatisfactory to accept the position as outlined. This matter is in no way unique. Not infrequently at 4 o'clock when there is strong opposition to a certain piece of legislation a small group of hon. Members wish to do their damnedest at the last moment to prevent the Chair from putting the Question. I am not mincing my words, because the Bill we were debating on Friday is of great social significance and people are perturbed about what has happened to it. It is clear that as the occupant of the Chair was on his feet it was wrong for any hon. Member to try to interfere with what the Chair was doing at that moment. I make the strongest possible appeal to my right hon. Friend the Lord President to intercede and announce that the Government will take immediate action to ensure that the legislation can proceed.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: rose——

Mr. Sneaker: I shall call the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr.


Bottomley) next in a moment. I have outlined the correct procedure. If the House wishes to change the rules, the House may do so. It is within the power of the House. I only interpret the will of the House. Mr. Short.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): Of course, we all accept what you say, Mr. Speaker, but there is a tremendous sense of grievance amongst many hon. Members at what occurred on Friday. If it will help, I will examine the matter, and discuss it with you and my hon. Friends to see whether we can find a way out of the difficulty.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: Some hon. Members who were here on Friday and on the previous Friday recognise a certain inconsistency in the arguments put forward last Friday on the Domestic Violence Bill and those put forward on the previous Friday on the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Bill. Is it possible for the Domestic Violence Bill to come up on the following Friday, as did the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Bill, when it will receive a Second Reading unless there are cries of "Object"? I do not accept what the hon. Member for Barking (Miss Richardson) said. An hon. Member who supported a Bill which was opposed would be able to time the end of his speech to exactly 4 o'clock, and there might be a myriad hon. Members who wish to continue the debate but would not be able to because the hon. Member had sat down one second before 4 o'clock.

Mr. Speaker: I have answered that question. If the hon. Member has sat down on time and another hon. Member jumps up, either the Closure is moved or the occupant of the Chair says "Debate to be resumed. What day?"

ANGOLA AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the threat to peace in Angola and Southern Africa.

That this is an important matter can hardly be in doubt. All threats to peace are important, and in this case we have seen something unique—namely, the airlifting of a large Cuban army from the Caribbean to Central Africa, the equipping of that army with heavy weapons by the Soviet Union and the conquest on behalf of the MPLA of a large, rich African country.
The importance of this for Britain is self-evident, as is the responsibility of Her Majesty's Ministers to comment thereon. The House claims to be responsible for Rhodesia, against which the Cubans and the Russians now say in terms that they intend to proceed. Commonwealth Prime Ministers have also forecast that within a short time there will be, to quote the words of one, "a bloodbath in Rhodesia". The people of Rhodesia, black as well as white, are Her Majesty's subjects, and legally their security is the responsibility of the House. We also have substantial trade and investment interests in Southern Africa and large numbers of citizens to protect. I suggest that the matter is clearly of importance.
I turn to the question whether it is urgent. There is evidence that it is. President Kaunda has forecast civil war in Rhodesia soon. The President of Tanzania has said that we are at the beginning of a war to the death in the British territory. For the British people in Rhodesia, and indeed for all those of our constituents who depend for their trade, investment and employment on our relations with Southern Africa, this is a matter of the greatest urgency.
Is it specific? I wish to make three specific suggestions. The first is that the Prime Minister should make it his business at once to go to see President Ford so that there shall be a common Western approach to the problem. Secondly, I suggest that the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs should here and now seek a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community to coordinate our collective attitude to the MPLA and to the risk of war involving all our countries in that area. Thirdly, I wish specifically to propose that our delegation to the United Nations should at once seek to raise this problem in the Security Council as a threat to peace. It is, I suggest, perfectly specific.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the question for you, as always, is whether it should take precedence over other important business before the House. There is important business—drivers' hours, the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords] and, as we have heard, whether the clock showed one minute to four or one minute past. There are many hon. Members who believe that the clock in Southern Africa now shows something closer to one minute to midnight and that the House should consider this matter as urgent, important and specific, and that we should do it now.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter which he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely, the new situation in which one British territory, Rhodesia, and two member countries of the Commonwealth are, or could, quickly become embroiled.
As the House knows, under Standing Order No. 9 I am directed to take into account the several factors set out in the Order but to give no reasons for my decision. I have given careful consideration to the representations which the hon. Gentleman has made, but I have to rule that his submission does not fall within the provisions of Standing Order No. 9 and, therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

Mr. Goodhew: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not the case that normally the matter under a Standing Order 9 application would, if granted, come before the House the following

day? Is not this subject more important than the Secretary of State for Industry's extra £1,000 which we are to debate tomorrow?

Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support, but he will recollect that my ruling is given on what is laid down in Standing Order No. 9.

BILL PRESENTED

FREEDOM OF SPEECH (RESTORATION)

Mr. Ronald Bell, supported by Mr. Ivor Stanbrook and Mr. Peter Fry, presented a Bill to repeal Section 6 of the Race Relations Act 1965; and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 12th March and to be printed. [Bill 65.]

INSOLVENCY BILL [Lords]

Ordered,
That the Insolvency Bill [Lords] be referred to a Second Reading Committee.—[Mr. Stoddart.]

EDUCATION (SCHOOL-LEAVING DATES) BILL [Lords]

Ordered,
That the Education (School-Leaving Dates) Bill [Lords] be referred to a Second Reading Committee.—[Mr. Stoddart.]

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS &c.

Ordered,
That the Fishing Vessels (Acquisition and Improvement) (Grants) Scheme 1976 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.—[Mr. Stoddart.]

Orders of the Day — ROAD TRAFFIC (DRIVERS' AGES AND HOURS OF WORK) BILL [LORDS]

Order for Second Reading read.

4.22 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Marks): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a short, technical and, I hope, uncontroversial Bill. It makes certain changes in our minimum driving ages and gives the Secretary of State wider powers to make regulations about drivers' hours. In both cases the Bill is needed because of EEC Regulation No. 543 of 1969, which deals with these matters. Under the Treaty of Accession these provisions have been in force within the United Kingdom for international journeys since April 1973.
The provisions of the Regulation relating to minimum drivers' ages came into force for internal journeys on 1st January 1976. The operation of those relating to drivers' hours has, however, as announced by my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport, been deferred until 1st July 1976, following an application to the Commission by the Government under Article 135 of the Act of Accession.
The changes in minimum driving ages and related driver licensing provisions are contained in Clause 1 and the schedules. They are, however, considerably less extensive in effect than might be supposed from the amount of detail contained in the rather lengthy schedules. Perhaps before explaining what these changes are I should say a word about why any changes are necessary at all.
To put it as simply as I can, the reason is that the EEC Regulation operates on most vehicles but not on all. It depends on the type of vehicle and, in some cases, on the purpose for which a vehicle is being used. In the case of goods vehicles, its minimum age provisions are governed by the criterion of permissible maximum weight, and in the case of passenger vehicles by seating capacity. These are the criteria used generally in Europe. Our

own criterion—which dates back a long time—has been unladen weight.
Since these EEC provisions took direct effect on 1st January, we have been in a situation in which the EEC Regulation governs the minimum driving ages for those vehicles to which it applies and the provisions of Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1972 determine them for the vehicles to which the Regulation does not apply.
This is an undesirable situation in both administrative and enforcement terms, not least because minimum age restrictions have to be evidenced on our driving licences, and it is quite impossible to do so with this mixture of criteria—related not only to unladen weight for goods vehicles, for example, but also according to the use to which a particular vehicle is being put.
I should remind the House that the Conservative Administration considered this matter and, after full consultation with all interested organisations, decided that the best solution was to realign our minimum age criteria with those used in the EEC Regulation and, as I have said, generally in the rest of Europe. The then Minister for Transport, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton), announced this in a Press notice issued on 19th February 1973. The Government endorse his conclusion. Permissible maximum weight is really a more sensible criterion of vehicle size for driver licensing purposes than unladen weight.
For technical reasons, the Bill replaces the present minimum age criteria contained in Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1972 by an amendment to Section 96, the effect of which is that anyone below the specified minimum age for the various categories of vehicle will be disqualified from holding a driving licence. As I have said, the categories are redefined in European terms. However, the total effect of these changes will, in practice, be small. First, no one over 21 will be affected at all. Secondly, Schedule 2 secures that no driver, of whatever age, with an existing entitlement will be affected.

Mr. Clement Freud: First the hon. Gentleman says that people will be disqualified from holding a licence, and now he says that no one who holds


a licence will be disqualified. Will he be good enough to explain?

Mr. Marks: People who newly apply for a licence will be disqualified but people between the ages of 17 and 21 who already hold a licence will not be disqualified. There is no change for existing licence holders.
Thirdly, people between the ages of 18 and 21, applying for a licence for the first time, will be restricted to goods vehicles not exceeding 7·5 metric tons permissible maximum weight instead of being restricted to those not exceeding 3 tons unladen weight. The effect of this change will be comparatively small—the two criteria are roughly equivalent. The main effect is on 17-year-olds who, on first licensing, will be restricted to goods vehicles not exceeding 3·5 tons metric—that is, about 30 cwt. unladen—instead of those not exceeding 3 tons unladen. I think that the the House will agree that such a restriction of 17-year-olds to the smaller goods vehicle will be a good thing in road safety terms.
So far as passenger vehicles are concerned, new drivers under 21 will be limited to nine-seaters—driver and eight passengers. This is the only effect of the EEC Regulation on entitlements to drive passenger vehicles, and it is reflected in the Bill. I stress this because a certain amount of misunderstanding has arisen over the provisions in Article 5(2)(c) of the Regulation. These require anyone driving a passenger vehicle with more than nine seats to hold a certificate of professional competence to drive passenger vehicles. I repeat that, as my hon. Friend has already said, the holding of an ordinary driving licence will be regarded as meeting this requirement.
Very briefly, therefore, those are the practical effects of Clause 1 and the related schedules. The opportunity has also been taken to make a corresponding change in the threshold at which the requirement for a heavy goods vehicle driver's vocational licence applies, changing it from 3 tons unladen to 7·5 metric tons permissible maximum weight.
Again, however, Schedule 2 contains suitable transitional provisions to ensure that existing drivers are not disadvantaged. Those with recent experience of driving vehicles which are brought into the category of heavy goods vehicle by

reason of the change will be able to claim an appropriate vocational driving licence without having to take the special heavy goods vehicle driving test.
Before leaving this part of the Bill, there is a further point which I should mention. It concerns the timetable for enactment of the Bill and the reference in Clause 4 to the date of 1st January 1976. When this Bill was drafted, it was envisaged that it would be enacted in time for these provisions for the harmonisation of minimum age legislation to come into force, with the EEC Regulation, on 1st January. Because printing had to be done in advance, new licences expressed to take effect from 1st January 1976 have been issued in terms consistent with the new minimum ages and vehicle categories imposed by the EEC Regulation. These new licences do not reflect the domestic minimum age provisions which, under Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1972, still apply to some vehicles or to some journeys, until that section is repealed by this Bill.
Clause 1 and Schedule 2 therefore contain provisions, introduced in another place, to ensure that such licences are valid and that no one may be prosecuted for driving in accordance with the terms of such a licence. These provisions will be paralleled by an amendment to Clause 4, which we hope to table in Committee, to provide that the minimum age provisions of the Bill will come into force on Royal Assent.
I turn now to the provisions of Clauses 2 and 3, which deal with the subject of drivers' hours. What I have said so far concerns only Article 5 of Regulation 543. The remainder of the Regulation deals with driving periods and rest periods for road transport crews. Under the Treaty of Accession, these provisions have been in force in this country for international journeys since April 1973. They were due to come into force for internal journeys on 1st January 1976 but have been deferred until 1st July.
If I may explain some of the background, my hon. Friend received representations from employers' associations and unions in the road transport industry that the implementation of these provisions in present circumstances would impose heavy financial burdens on the


industry and would cause heavy dislocation to vital services. This is because the Regulation is more restrictive than the drivers' hours requirements in force here under our own Transport Act 1968. In addition, the Regulation is currently under review and it would clearly be undesirable to introduce changes in drivers' hours twice in quick succession, as we would have to do should the Regulation be altered. For these reasons, my hon. Friend sought to have the coming into force of the Regulation for internal journeys deferred. Agreement could not be reached at the Council of Transport Ministers on 10th and 11th December 1975, but the EEC Commission accepted our economic arguments and on 22nd December authorised protective measures under Article 135 of the Act of Accession for a period of six months. Similar authorisation was given to the Republic of Ireland and Denmark.
Meanwhile, the Commission is urgently preparing proposals for the amendment of the Regulation itself, which it is hoped will include provision for a further period of deferment. My hon. Friend is most concerned to see amendments made to the Regulation which he considers would make it more acceptable to those concerned in this country. He is not alone in this, because several member States have found parts of the Regulation to be unrealistic. They, too, are in favour of making it more flexible.
Having said that, I should make it clear that the principles of the driving and rest provisions, which have arisen from concern with road safety and social conditions, are perfectly acceptable to the Government, and are, indeed, principles which have been recognised in our road transport legislation for more than 40 years. Our own legal requirements, however, have developed in a different way from those in the EEC Regulation, and our own requirements will generally continue to apply to drivers of those vehicles outside the scope of the Regulation. We therefore foresee that, when the Regulation is implemented, problems will arise from the simultaneous operation side by side of two different codes. These problems will be particularly acute for drivers whose work brings them first under one code and then under the other in the same day or week. To remove, or at least

limit, these problems will require a fairly radical change in Part VI of the Transport Act 1968, under which existing drivers' hours rules are laid down, as well as supplementation of Regulation 543.
The opportunity of this Bill has, therefore, been taken to seek the necessary enabling powers so that, when the time comes to implement Regulation 543, it can be fitted smoothly into a compatible legal framework, and so that those who work in the road transport industry can operate within a properly integrated system of control. The power to implement Regulation 543 is given by Section 2 of the European Communities Act 1972, but this power is not wide enough for all that ought to be done when the Regulation extends to internal transport as well as international journeys.
Clause 2 of the Bill effects these changes and is intended to do two things. First, it would provide a power for the Secretary of State to adapt by regulation Part VI of the 1968 Act to ensure compatibility of operation with the Regulation. This adaptation could, for example, take the form of the substitution in Part VI of the entire framework of the EEC Regulation, while retaining the hours limits considered appropriate for United Kingdom law. The power would also extend to enable Part VI to be adapted to take account of the operation of any other relevant Community provisions, whether directly applicable or not.
Secondly, Clause 2 would extend the enforcement provisions of the 1968 Act to any directly applicable Community provisions about the driving of road vehicles. This would be achieved by extending to internal journeys the enforcement provisions of the 1968 Act which were applied by Schedule 4 to the European Communities Act to international journeys. Clause 2 also makes provision for supplementary and consequential provisions, particularly in relation to record-keeping.
Regulations made under Section 95(1) of the 1968 Act as amended by Clause 2 would be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure in this House. My hon. Friend intends to introduce an amendment to this effect in Committee in response to the views expressed in another place.
Clause 4(2) makes provision for Clause 2 to come into force on such


day as the Secretary of State may appoint, and different days may be appointed for different provisions. This would allow account to be taken of the deferment of Regulation 543/69 and the outcome of discussions about its amendment.
Clause 3 clarifies the provision in Part VI of the 1968 Act which confers jurisdiction on magistrates' courts to try summary cases for the contravention of the drivers' hours and records requirements. Section 103(7) of that Act at present provides that proceedings for a drivers' hours offence may be commenced in any court having jurisdiction
in the place where the person charged with the offence is for the time being".
As amended, the section would make it clear that proceedings could be instigated in a court with jurisdiction for the place where the person charged with driving when evidence of the offence first came to light, the place where the offender is or where he resides when proceedings are commenced, or the place where the offender normally operates.
I commend the Bill to the House.

4.39 p.m.

Mr. Norman Fowler: It is appropriate that we should be debating this subject since we are, of course, awaiting the Government's consultative document on transport which will begin the most important debate on transport policy for almost a decade.
Already there are the unmistakable signs of the gathering storm, with mass lobbies of this House and the intense public relations campaign that we have seen in past weeks. In the claims and counter-claims, however, one fact stands out, and that is that in the carriage of freight road transport is pre-eminent and, what is more, that it will continue so irrespective of the final shape of the consultative document that the Minister proposes to issue.
It is right that we should remind ourselves of that fact. Road transport is the chief means whereby goods travel, and no policy which fails to recognise that is realistic. More than two-thirds of the goods which go by road transport travel distances of 25 miles or less. It would be folly to think that any Government edict would transfer any significant part of that load to rail or anywhere else.
That being the case, any new policy affecting road transport should be examined to see whether it increases the cost of transport because, if it does, it is the public who will suffer through having to pay higher prices for the goods transported.
The Bill makes changes in our minimum driving ages and gives the Secretary of State wider powers to make regulations about drivers' hours. The obvious point of concern is the restrictions introduced on drivers' hours and distances covered. EEC Regulations are more restrictive than the regulations laid down in the 1968 Act. Under the European rules no driver may drive for more than eight hours or 450 kilometres—roughly 280 miles. Our Regulations stipulate 10 hours and an unlimited distance. Clearly, if the European system were adopted immediately there would be an enormous increase in costs.
The Freight Transport Association estimates that the cost of implementing the drivers' hours provisions alone would be about £300 million. Extra drivers, changed schedules and new depots would be needed. The dislocation would be enormous. The net result would be that, at a time when this country is fighting desperately for economic recovery, road transport would be made more difficult and more expensive. That would be totally unacceptable, and we therefore support any efforts by the Government to get the provisions changed. Such a move is particularly important at a time when it is clear that other European countries are dissatisfied with them.
All the evidence is that the present rules are not well observed in the Common Market countries, and the feeling against them in Europe appears to be growing. As the Minister knows, there was a meeting of the Joint Consultative Committee on Transport in Brussels last week, and representatives from both employers and unions made clear that they were totally dissatisfied with the rules as they now stand. Clearly, it would be ludicrous for the Government to implement changes if they were then forced to alter them. Two sets of changes in quick succession would make business planning an absolute nightmare.
I hope it is not thought that only the road haulage industry feels strongly about the Common Market Regulations. The fiercest opposition comes from the


passenger transport industry, which is particularly concerned about the eight-hour provision and the rest-day provisions which go with it. It would hit particularly the small operator and would entirely eliminate some forms of travel like the long-day excursion. An example is the one-day trip from London to Stratford-on-Avon. On such a trip the driver would exceed the eight-hour maximum, and there is no prospect of a coach operator putting on two drivers as that would make the trip uneconomic. Other disadvantages also flow, and all told coach and bus operators regard the European regulations as a disaster.
After pressure had been exerted by both sides of industry the Government managed to secure a six-month stay of execution. The Regulations should have come into operation on 1st January. Postponement has been ensured until 1st July, but no one should be under the slightest misapprehension that that by itself is enough. The Freight Transport Association says that there should be at least 12 months after enactment, and preferably 24 months, until it could bring the Regulations into force. I gather that Mr. Jack Jones has suggested that a postponement of four years would be realistic.
The point is that, rather than postponement or delay, we need a better law. That should be the overall aim of the Government. We need a law which, above all, will give flexibility to the member States and which meets the different needs of the different States. That is what the Government should press for, and if they did that they would be supported by other European nations.
The next important part of the legislation concerns the changes in definition of heavy goods vehicles. Obviously, any change in that respect is important because it might mean that a driver would have to get the stricter heavy goods vehicle licence. One of the principal effects of the Bill is to change the criteria for the classification of vehicles. Our present definition of unladen weight is to be replaced by the European definition of permissible maximum weight. The general public will not regard that as one of the more earth-shattering changes of recent years. However, a characteristic of the Bill is that the detailed and tech-

nical definitions hide important changes. The effect is, first, that 14,000 vehicles will become heavy goods vehicles and that 20,000 vehicles will cease to be so.
Let me deal first with the 14,000 vehicles. These are lorries of three tons unladen weight or less which have a permissible maximum weight of over 7·5 tonnes. They will be caught by the European rules, as will the drivers. It is estimated that about 20,000 drivers will be affected by the new rules. The Government are obviously right to seek to protect the livelihoods of these drivels. It would have been intolerable had the Government not sought to do so. At present, the drivers need only an ordinary driving licence. The Government propose that they should now have limited licences for the class of vehicles that they have been used to driving. We regard that as a sensible compromise solution.
I have questions to raise, however, on the second group of vehicles. In future, vehicles of less than 7·5 tonnes permissible maximum weight will no longer be regarded as heavy goods vehicles. That will be so even though they may be over the old British limit of three tons. There is confusion here. The changes have been expected inside the road transport industry and preparations have been made. When the industry has asked the Department when the Regulations will come into effect, it has been given the date of 1st January 1976. But, of course, legislation does not become operative until it is passed by the House. There is a general exception in this legislation, but the British law remains in force. Thus the 20,000 vehicles which will cease to be heavy goods vehicles when the Bill is passed remain heavy goods vehicles at present.
This is not an academic point, as a report in the Commercial Motor makes clear. The report says that chaos has hit the industry. It goes on to say:
Many hauliers who had been told by the Department of Employment that these new regulations…were being adopted in Britain from January 1 mistakenly believe that only vehicles over 7·5 tonnes gross now need HGV driving licences. One case has already been reported where a driver of a vehicle over 3 tons unladen has been stopped and threatened with prosecution because he was not an HGV holder.
The FTA confirmed that this was the position and said that it was obvious


from the number of calls it had received that a lot of operators were seeking to take advantage of a law which does not yet exist.
A similar point has been put to me by a company in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. A director of the company says in a letter:
We employ two drivers, one with HGV licence and one without, and use two vehicles… The HGV driver retired this week and we are not setting on another driver. As a consequence…we are selling both our existing vehicles and taking delivery of a tipping lorry which is under 7·5 tonnes…which under the EEC regulations…our non-licensed driver will be entitled to drive. However, it would appear we shall fall foul of the over 3 tons unladen weight' regulations until such time as the relevant Act of Parliament is passed.
That director states that he has spent over £5,000 on a vehicle which he cannot use, and he asks:
What do we tell our customers when we cannot give the service to which they are accustomed? Is there a form of dispensation for people caught in this manner? If not, why not?
The Minister should give the industry some guidance on that. The Department has not only given guidance that legislation will take effect on 1st January 1976 but it has taken special action to preserve that starting point in the case of driving licences issued since 1st January which meet the minimum age requirements of the European Regulations. In other words, even though the legislation has not gone through Parliament, the Government are introducing a retrospective provision which will prevent a driver running foul of existing British law on minimum age Regulations.
The Regulation governing what constitutes a heavy goods vehicle remains in force. But although the law is being changed and all departmental advice has been that 1st January will be the starting date, operators will still be breaking the law and drivers will be subject to prosecution. Is that the legal position? What is the prosecution position in such cases, and are the Government proposing any corrective action?
I turn next to the question of passenger vehicles. Article 5 of the EEC Regulations requires that any driver of a vehicle carrying more than nine persons should hold a certificate of professional competence. The Under-Secretary has mentioned this, and the Minister for Transport has said that he proposes to

recognise an ordinary driving licence as proof of competence to drive a minibus, provided that it is not operated for hire or reward. If it is, the driver will need a public service vehicle licence. I understand that the Minister is seeking exemption for all minibus operators. We therefore come to the difficult question of what constitutes "for hire or reward". That is of particular importance to voluntary organisations.
Before Christmas, the Government gave guidance that if contributions made were entirely unqualified—that is, not placing any obligation on the voluntary organisation to organise a trip—they would not be caught. That does not seem to cover the likeliest situation Surely it would be more likely for money to be collected for the purpose of that trip. It seems likely that a voluntary body organising a holiday for pensioners or for some other group with specialist needs would charge for the journey, even if it was at a minimum rate. Will that be interpreted as being for hire or reward?
Many voluntary organisations are currently in severe financial difficulties. They may have no option but to charge at least something for transport. What consultations have there been with voluntary organisations, and particularly with the National Council for Social Service, which is the obvious organisation to advise the Department on any evidence that the provisions are causing hardship?
There is also the important issue of parliamentary scrutiny of changes in the law proposed by the Government. The 1968 Act required that changes in drivers' hours should be debated and approved in the House. That does not appear to be the original intention of the legislation. Originally changes would not have been subject to affirmative resolution, but that has now been altered, and we welcome it. It would be serious if Community rules on drivers' hours were immediately implemented, and for that reason we believe that any future changes must be fully debated in the House. Only then will such changes receive the examination they deserve. The recent debate on speed limits showed how unsatisfactory the alternative system can be in Parliament. I congratulate Lord Teviot and Lord Mowbray Segrave and Stourton


on raising the matter and for winning a clear concesson from the Government that changes will be subject to the affirmative procedure and debated in both Houses.
This is important legislation affecting an important industry. We support the general intention to improve road safety and the important provision to save police time and money when enforcing the law. I hope that the Government will pursue this intention in other parts of their road transport policy. The Bill requires scrutiny in Committee but it deserves a Second Reading.

4.56 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: I apologise to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for not being in the House when he began his comments. I wish to add my anxiety about the way in which these measures may operate, to avoid any suspicion that it is a matter which is of concern only to the critics on the Opposition Benches. There are anxieties throughout the House.
I pay tribute to all those in the Department of the Environment, including the Minister for Transport, who have spent a great deal of time trying to secure a stay of execution and alteration to the provisions that are likely to come into force through the Community regulations. It is important to understand what a strong case was argued to achieve major changes in the proposals and to get a more effective stay than the six months which have been secured.
Is there any hope of further progress in that direction? Perhaps the anxieties expressed in other countries may prove more effective. Can we give more voice to those anxieties, as well as to our own, to secure a review of the provisions? Many people in my constituency and elsewhere are concerned about the rigidity of the new rules and there are fears that work might be lost if the rules are imposed within the time limit suggested, and that from a national economic point of view, it might make sense if there were a prospect of road haulage work moving to rail. That is not the only possibility. Certain loads might go out of existence. There are fears of that kind, as well as about the implications of considerable increases in costs.
We are all concerned to ensure the highest level of safety and the promotion of safety. Therefore, naturally we must make concessions which will meet that need. One accepts that wholly. However, I hope very much that we have not heard the last word on these proposals, nor, indeed, on the question of the tacho-graphs, which has also raised plenty of problems in the past.
I merely want to make clear that some of us are conscious of the concern and anxiety that is being expressed. We shall be glad to hear whether any further discussions and negotiations are planned and what prospects of success there may be in them.

5.0 p.m.

Mr. Clement Freud: This is probably not one of the most important Bills to come before the House, although it has been given a false prominence by having been deemed by the Chair to be more important than a debate about the situation in South Africa.
There has been extraordinary confusion about the Bill, which was believed at first to be able at a stroke to change the lives of British drivers. In fact, the only people who will be affected by it will be youths between the ages of 17 and 21 who have not as yet got a heavy goods vehicle licence or a public service vehicle licence.
There is a case which I should like to raise. It was referred to by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), and I have raised it previously with the Minister. It concerns the disparity between drivers who drive public service vehicles for gain and those who do not do so for gain. I raised this matter previously because I found in my constituency that there were people driving works buses with a very large number of people in them, but driving without anything other than an ordinary common-or-garden driving licence. This was quite legal. However, there was an appalling case on Christmas Eve when an old peoples' outing found that their own minibus was out of order, went to a friendly motor hire company and borrowed a bus for nothing, and were then prosecuted because the ownership of that bus lay with someone who was in the business for gain. If ever a law needed to be tidied up, not only for the sake of


common sense but also for the safety of those on the road, it is very much this law.
I notice on page 4 of the Bill the clause heading
Extension of jurisdiction over offences about drivers' hours.
I make no apology for raising this because if we are to have laws in this land, let them be laws which are rational and capable of comprehension. Under this clause heading the Bill states:
An offence under this Part of this Act may be treated for the purpose of conferring jurisdiction on a court (but without prejudice to any jurisdiction it may have apart from this subsection) as having been committed in any of the following places".
It seems to me that what the Bill is trying to do is to find someone who will be legally responsible to meet a prosecution, irrespective of where it takes place. Quite obviously, in an eight-hour journey, this could be in a very substantial number of places.
When one comes to paragraph (c) one finds gobbledegook of a very high order. It says,
the place where at that time that person or, in the case of an employee-driver, that person's employer or, in the case of an owner-driver, the person for whom he was driving".
How can an owner-driver have someone for whom he was driving as
his place or principal place of business or his operating centre for the vehicle in question"?
Paragraph (b) says:
the place where that person resides or is believed to reside or be at the time when the proceedings are commenced".
It would be hard to think of anyone who does not come within those criteria.
Perhaps the most important part of this does affect drivers' hours. It has been said already that drivers' hours are not altered. What the Bill does is to provide an enabling measure so that when the EEC member countries lose patience with our reluctance to conform to Community law, our traffic Acts can be amended. It is very likely that the present limitations on hours which are operative within the EEC will not be introduced here because there is considerable argument, especially in France and Holland, about their desirability. However, if the limitations were to be introduced they would, as has been said, be strenuously

opposed by haulage contractors, and I think particularly in those parts of the country represented by my right hon. and hon. Friends. I am talking about Cornwall, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Berwick—the list is very long; as large as the number of my colleagues.
However, the Minister must understand that if a lorry is to travel from Scotland to the Midlands, say, that would entail an overnight stay with consequent extra costs. That is something that we are absolutely unprepared to support. It has been believed by some that as much as 20 per cent. will be added to the bill, caused by the overnight stoppage and the extra driving. I am sure that this matter will be cleared up in Committee.
I am sure that this is a good Bill. We do not oppose it in any way.

5.6 p.m.

Mr. Peter Fry: I commence by referring to the subject raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) and the hon. Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud)—the confusion that arises over the use of minibuses and coaches by people who do not hold public vehicle service licences or heavy goods vehicle licences and, indeed, the use of vehicles which are subject only to the normal Ministry of Transport test. This is an area which could well have been looked at in regard to this Bill.
I want to put a situation to the Minister. Last year there was considerable concern, expressed particularly on the Labour Benches, about a number of accidents to coaches on the highway. I remind the Minister that the drivers of those coaches had taken an extended driving test and that those vehicles were subject to very stringent examination procedures. However, the existence in Britain of many other vehicles of similar types should also give the Government cause for concern.
Is the Minister aware that any school or parent-teacher association can quite easily purchase a clapped-out coach—a coach which, perhaps, has ceased to be a "public service vehicle", or which, perhaps, has for a while been driven for carrying people to and from their regular places of work—and that that vehicle can then be operated to carry schoolchildren on school journeys by someone


who holds only a normal driving licence, as long as that person is over 21, and that the vehicle is subject only to the normal MOT examination?
I know that the Minister for Transport is rightly concerned with the question of road safety. Everyone in the House would agree that this is a very high priority at present. However, this is a matter which should be examined, not only because of the road safety angle, but also, quite rightly, because the coach firm proprietors, who have to spend a lot of money in training personnel and maintaining their vehicles, often consider that they are subjected to very unfair competition from voluntary organisations.
I do not want my remarks to be misinterpreted. I am not attacking voluntary organisations or PTAs which wish to provide vehicles to convey their members or pupils. What I am saying that it is in the interests of everyone concerned to ensure that the people who drive those vehicles are sufficiently competent to do so and that the vehicles are very thoroughly examined.
There is a good precedent here in what is happening in Norfolk at present. That is the experiment with the minibus which is being operated by members of a parish council. That is one of the most encouraging ideas which has been seen for a long time in the whole realm of rural transport. It has at least as its essential condition the provision that the voluntary drivers must undertake an advanced driving test and that the vehicle is maintained by the local subsidiary of the National Bus Company. I therefore hope that the Minister, even though perhaps not in this Bill, will consider this matter further.
As my hon. Friend said, the Opposition welcome the Bill. It would have been possible to make one or two churlish comments about the time that it has taken to prepare it, but I do not think that comments such as that are suitable on an occasion when there is general approval for this measure. It is not a Bill that is subject to party political differences. We all appreciate that there is a real need to improve road safety and at the same time to protect the interests not only of the operators and their employees but also the users of road trans-

port, those who use it for freight or are conveyed as passengers.
I, too, welcome the efforts of certain noble Lords in the other place who persuaded the Government that any major changes in the regulations should be subject to the affirmative procedure. It would have been wrong to proceed by a secondary method to achieve something that deserves primary legislation.
I emphasise what my hon. Friend said about the rôle of the road transport industry. The last year for which full figures are available is 1973, during which the industry operated no fewer than 55 million ton miles. By any comparison the industry is the major carrier of freight and it is doing this work on roads which, to be honest, bear poor comparison with some of the roadworks of our EEC partners.
To put the matter into context I should like to quote the percentage freight carried on the roads in this country compared with the situation of some of our neighbours and partners. In this country in 1973, 79 per cent. of all freight went by road, compared with 45 per cent. in West Germany, 47 per cent. in France, and 60 per cent. in the Netherlands. We can, therefore, see the crucial importance of the road haulage industry to the carriage of freight in this country.
I propose now to consider the future. This Bill is only the first course of what could be a prolonged meal. It is a first course which all our EEC partners appear to consider reasonable. The differences will come when we get to the meat rather later in the year, and I understand that the meeting in Brussels last week showed a wide degree of difference particularly between the interests of the various countries and the proposals put forward by the Commission. It is right to realise that there will be difficult days ahead, and the Minister will need all the all-party support that he can get to put forward our country's interests.
The passenger-carrying interests are particularly concerned about the proposal that the working week should be of 46 hours, and not 48 as at present. We appreciate that under existing law they are limited to a 92-hour working fortnight, but they maintain that the reduction of two hours in one week will he expensive and difficult to operate.
They further feel strongly that the idea of reducing the maximum working day


to a 12-hour period will be disastrous financially. My hon. Friend rightly drew attention to excursions to Stratford-on-Avon. May I be more mundane and refer to excursions to Blackpool and other seaside places which entail long hauls for many coach operators. Many of them will find it impossible to operate on anything like the same scale of economies as they do now if the Commission's new proposals as outlined in the past two or three weeks come into force.
One of the most difficult of these will be the 65-hour maximum week. The reason for this is simple. The 65 hours would include all those parts of the day when a driver, having driven his coach-load to the seaside, is waiting before he drives his passengers back home again. The number of hours that he drives could be within the limit, but the total working day would soon exceed 16 hours. By a little arithmetic one can work out that four times 16 is 64 hours a week, and if the new 65-hour week limit is agreed that man will be able to do no more work after those four days.
The passenger interests are so concerned that they tried to put a figure on what the Commission's proposals would cost the bus industry. They came up with a total of £55 million. I am sure that nobody, least of all the Minister for Transport, would want to load the passenger-carrying industry with an increase of that kind at this time.
I now turn briefly to the lorry sector. The figure which the Commission's proposals would cost has been estimated at about £300 million, and I believe that to be a conservative estimate. Here, too, the main lorry interests are concerned about the length of the working day. They are also concerned about the proposal to restrict the length of a journey to 450 kilometres. The Commission's proposals during the last few days do nothing to allay the fears of the lorry interests. Indeed, the proposal that the 450 kilometre limit may be waived if a tachograph is installed seems to be an odd concession and bears no relation to the objections about overall travelling distances.
There is concern, too, that many of the proposals are rather irrelevant. 'I he suggestion, for example, that during a sea crossing a part of the time can be

allocated to a rest time is rather irrelevant if the sea crossing has to be a minimum of seven hours for it to apply. Nothing has been said in the Commission's proposals about those many sea crossings between this country and the EEC countries which take less than seven hours.
There are other issues about which the various transport interests are concerned, and I hope that the Minister will take note of their worries. I should like to list one or two for him. They consider that there is a need for special concessions to apply to driving to and from recognised development areas in the community. At the moment these are not recognised. Secondly, they feel that the rules on drivers' hours and other regulations need not apply to non-driving crew members. They appear to do so now.
Thirdly, they feel that the maximum rest period should be a 24-hour day. This is important in relation to the restriction in the maximum working week, because if the period is longer than 24 hours it makes it difficult for any operator to exercise any kind of shift system from one week to the next. The fact that the Commission always talks in terms of a seven-day period rather than a calendar week may be simpler for the Commission, but it can cause considerable domestic upsets in many families where the husband is the driver of a bus or long-distance lorry.
Furthermore, the lorry interests believe that the regulations on hours should apply to driving on duty. I think I made that clear in my comments about excursions to places such as Blackpool. Finally, they suggest that the daily driving limit should be 10 hours, and the maximum continuous driving period should be five hours and not four. These proposals are not an attempt to make life more difficult for the driver in this country or to endanger the safety of the public. They are put forward because the proposals as they stand constitute a considerable threat to the work of many drivers. They constitute a threat to the costs that the operators have to face, and ultimately, therefore, they are a threat to the general public.
I very much hope that when the Minister goes to Brussels and talks about the next course he will realise that he


will have the support of the House in standing up for British interests. I trust he will realise that we do not want a revamp of Regulation 543/69. As my hon. Friend said, we want a new law, a good law which is in the interests of us all, particularly the people of this country.

5.20 p.m.

Mr. Donald Stewart: I intervene briefly in this debate because I wish to deal with only a restricted part of the Bill.
The Transport Act having been placed on the statute book in 1968, one might wonder why it is necessary, after such a short time, to have this Bill. As the Minister said, the intention is that the Bill shall comply with an EEC regulation. That is not a selling point which will make a great impression on me. However, I have an open mind and I am prepared to accept that there is some merit in parts of the Bill. The provisions relating to coaches, minibuses and 17-year-old drivers are rational enough. I do not believe anyone in the House quarrels with those provisions.
I am concerned more about Clause 2 relating to drivers' hours. In Scotland, and certainly in the Highlands and Islands, there is a great deal of opposition to this part of the Bill—on the employers' side because it will increase cost factors and there will need to be a re-adaptation of their schedules, and from the workers because they can see the possibility of a restriction of their earnings. On certain routes lorries might have to be withdrawn altogether because the operating cost would be too high.
In my constituency there is a textile firm which took a consignment of machinery from Bradford two years ago, and the cost of transporting the lorry on the four-hour sea journey was higher than the cost of the trip by road from Bradford. These costs go on to the Islands at all times. If the companies are obliged to employ two drivers on a journey or to employ a changeover driver, their operating costs may well be increased.
There are also difficulties involved in carrying livestock from the North of Scotland to the markets in the South-East. Such journeys could hardly be carried out within the times laid down in the Bill. Spokesmen for the Transport and

General Workers' Union have said that they are looking for flexibility in the Bill, and I too wish to see some flexibility.
In many parts of the Highlands of Scotland there are no motorways and, indeed, hardly any roads over long distances. The alternative railway services have already disappeared, under the Beeching cuts. Here I take issue with the hon. Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) and for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) in their assertions about the rôle which road transport must play in a future integrated transport system. I accept that it must remain the main carrier, but I hope that in future it will not be responsible for so high a figure as 79 per cent. of the carriage. I understand that in the 1968 Act there were certain exemptions for the Highlands area. I suggest that the Minister for Transport should press the EEC to ensure that these exemptions remain when the Bill goes on to the statute book.

5.22 p.m.

Mr. Bruce George: I welcome the Bill in general. I believe that it is the major concern of hon. Members to have as much safety as possible in road transport, and I speak particularly of coaches. At the same time, whilst it is a major concern, I do not think we should regard it as an absolute criterion. If we were concerned totally with safety we would go back to the age of the man walking in front of a vehicle and waving a red flag, and drivers would not drive for more than six hours in any one day. But clearly, in view of the coach disasters which took place last year—which in some cases, I agree, were over-publicised by the media—we must learn lessons from the accidents which involve the coach hire industry, and improve safety.
We must not be guilty of over-exaggeration. I have no brief for any one section of the industry. I have on many occasions hired coaches and have been guilty of looking for cheapness in hiring a coach. When one sends off for a quotation to hire a coach, let us say to travel to Stratford-upon-Avon—which has become very famous in the last half-hour or so—one has very much in mind the cost, and one often takes the cheapest quotation. But cheapness is not always consistent with safety.
I have some reservations about the way in which sections of the coach hire industry operates. There are many reputable companies. It is an industry with a variable pattern of ownership and size. On the one hand, there are the giant companies, both private and public, and then there are the municipally owned companies, while at the other extreme there is a large number of very small operators some of whom own only one or two coaches.
I have few adverse comments to make about the larger operators. I am generally satisfied with their standards of maintenance, because they employ large numbers of people maintaining their fleets of vehicles. I am satisfied with the way in which they arrange the hours within which their drivers work, because there is usually strict enforcement. However, I have some reservations about the way in which some smaller companies operate. The companies that I have dealt with in my experience have been satisfactory in this respect, but there are some operators—indeed, more than a few—who would cause me and others some concern.

Mr. Fry: I am following with interest what the hon. Gentleman has said describing the differences between the large and small operators. Has he any statistics to back up his comments about the small operators? I think he would be the first to agree that the majority are running good businesses and that their vehicles are well maintained.

Mr. George: I said that I believe the majority of them are operating in a reasonable manner, but I am concerned about a minority, although not an insignificant minority, of cases. Many of the small companies are non-unionised, though that is no concern of this legislation. Many of them are not operating with a satisfactory degree of maintenance, for a number of reasons. One reason is that if it is a one-man operation he wants to keep the vehicle on the road for as long as possible, so that there may be a tendency to neglect maintenance.
The major criticism is often in the number of hours that the driver is working, chiefly in the summer season. There is an enormous demand for coaches, particularly in the London area, and stricter legislation on drivers' hours is likely to

push up the costs. Therefore, in some cases—and I am being careful in what I say; hon. Members can draw their own conclusions about the extent—drivers are encouraged by their employers to work more than the maximum number of permitted hours. Having some experience from the outside of the industry when I am driving past a private coach late at night, I try to keep a fair distance between my car and the coach because when I am passing it I wonder how long the driver has been on the road. He could be on the road far longer than the legal maximum, and this constitutes a great hazard both to the passengers in the vehicle and to other road users. In some cases, therefore, the laws are being openly flouted.
There should be far more spot checks on the number of hours that drivers work and on the standard of maintenance. One may say that it is not feasible to stop a coach on its way to Stratford or Blackpool and give it a protracted check because the passengers would regard that as an infringement of their personal liberty and it would delay them getting to their destination. Nevertheless would it not be possible to have more spot checking when coaches arrive at their destinations? In the summer season many coaches are parked in municipal car parks in the major tourist centres, and I should like there to be far more checks so that more statistics of the kind required by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) could be provided. That is certainly feasible.
Another cause for some anxiety, which is linked to the matters I have already raised, is the way in which some coach companies will at weekends use drivers who have already reached or even exceeded their maximum number of hours in other employment. Thus, a driver who has reached his maximum during his working week, say as a lorry driver, may well be hired by a small operator to drive a party to the coast. That may be against the law—it probably is—but I know that it does happen, and in my view the passengers are put at risk because the driver has been at a wheel—not the same wheel—for far too long. As I say, this certainly gives me cause for concern.
Plainly, we must be concerned about safety, but the public often have to make a choice. If they want cheapness, perhaps


they will be prepared to tolerate the continuation of a system which I regard with some disfavour, indeed anxiety, with small coach companies operating within a fiercely competitive trade trying to get as much work out of their drivers as possible. They do not always employ two drivers on one long journey because that would obviously put up the cost.
It has been suggested that it is possible to have two coaches going from A to B with reserve drivers on, and then they could cross over coaches at the point of arrival and drive the coaches back. But, as I understand it—I may be contradicted here—they cannot have a reserve driver going, say, to Blackpool and then crossing over within the same coach. That may be an anomaly, or I may be wrong, in which case I apologise, but I should like to hear an explanation at some later stage.
Although we are rightly concerned with safety, the public have to decide between alternatives, and the Government have to make a choice, too. If people want cheapness, they will tolerate the present system and the closing of eyes to the law. There cannot be absolute safety, but if we want as much safety as possible, the price must unfortunately be paid, and that payment will have to be made from one's wallet or purse.

5.32 p.m.

Mr. Hamish Watt: Although there may be one or two good points in the Bill, it has none the less been hanging like the sword of Damocles over the whole transport system of the North of Scotland, and I hope to show the House in only a few minutes why this has been so.
No one condones any operator who seeks to run his business with insufficiently maintained vehicles. Nevertheless, the Bill will do untold damage in the North of Scotland. First, I refer to the effect which it will have on the haulier of livestock in my area in the North. Hon. Members have spoken of such places as Blackpool and Stratford-on-Avon, all very far south from us. In Scotland, we are more concerned with the distance between Inverness and Carlisle or between Aberdeen and Manchester. When I remind the House that the distance from Aberdeen to Manchester is no less than 368

miles, far in excess of the distances to be allowed under the Bill, hon. Members will see what I mean.
In the North-East of Scotland, from very early in the morning, hauliers go round the farms picking up loads of lambs, or hoggets, as they are known at this time of year, and there may be as many as four or five different collecting points. At each one the lorry will pick up its load of sheep, taking up to about 40 minutes, and then continue on with its load of live animals all the way to Manchester. The House must understand that it is impossible to do that within the hours stipulated.
Moreover, there is a problem peculiar to our unique situation as it affects the sheep markets in the extreme North of Scotland in the area of Wick and Thurso. The sheep are taken to market by various means, often by tractor-trailers driven by the farmers themselves, and as the stock are collected and bought by farmers from the South, transport has then to be arranged. Many of the sheep will have been collected from the hills up to three days before being taken to market. It is essential that these young beasts are taken to their destination as quickly as possible, and for this purpose lorries must come from the South to take the loads back.
When he sets out in the morning, a farmer has no way of knowing that he will be able to purchase a load of lambs. It will depend entirely on the prices pertaining at the market. But let us say that by midday a farmer who has travelled overnight from Aberdeen to Thurso knows that he will get more or less the load of lambs he wants. He at once telephones his haulier in the Aberdeen area, 274 miles away. He makes his telephone call for a lorry to be sent for his load of 200, 300 or 400 lambs, whatever it may be, and he says "Let us make sure we get them home tonight, if possible, because the lambs are very tired". We are thus talking about a double distance of 274 miles. How can any haulier do that under the regulations proposed? I recognise that this applies to only a limited period during the year, and I ask for a derogation covering 16 weeks to meet these unique circumstances.
I turn next to another trade, the hauling of mature pigs down to Carlisle, for example. This trade goes on throughout the year, but the circumstances are much


the same. There may be as many as 10 pickup points in the morning before the lorry can get on the road, and it is vital that the pigs reach the slaughterhouse in Carlisle or wherever it may be with minimum loss of weight and minimum upset.
It must not be forgotten that a haulier of livestock cannot travel at speeds possible for the haulier of deadstock. He has to give his animals a careful journey, and he has to give them that careful journey on winding and narrow roads. There are no motorways north of Perth, and we have distances of 274 miles north of Perth. The House must appreciate the unique needs of the North of Scotland in this respect. I could give other illustrations from the business of livestock haulage, but I hope that I have said enough to establish my point.
I turn next to another industry of importance in the North of Scotland, the whisky industry. The Customs and Excise regulations require that no whisky carried on lorries may lie out in a car park or lorry park at any time. It must be within bond. Therefore, it is essential that the whisky which is picked up on Speyside in the morning is delivered to bond at Greenock, Paisley, Perth or wherever it may be in the evening. Again, there may be several pick-up points. If we are to have a decent blend of whisky, there may be as many as four or five different kinds picked up by a lorry from various distilleries, and it is impossible for the driver to reach the Customs and Excise compound within the hours proposed.
The drivers themselves as well as the transport operators are greatly concerned. I was at the staff dance of one transport firm only last Saturday night, and just about every driver of the 20 employed there came to me to express great concern about the way these regulations will affect drivers in the North of Scotland.
Finally, on the question of the age of drivers, I draw another special circumstance to the attention of the House, and here I refer to the remote hotel. The business of remote hotels is usually seasonal, and most of their staff are students. As such a hotel is often a long distance from a railhead, it is commonly necessary that the hotel minibus, carrying 12 or 14 people, be driven by the only person available, and that is a student.

Yet here we have this blanket legislation, legislating perfectly well for areas with motorways and legislating perfectly well, no doubt, for the EEC, but totally inapplicable to the special circumstances which obtain throughout the North of Scotland.
Is it not surprising that so many people in Scotland dislike the EEC because of the blanket legislation that stems from it? In the framing of legislation I hope that the Minister will take special care to cover the circumstances of those who live in remote areas.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. Marks: I am grateful for the general support which has been voiced for the Bill. It is understandable that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have taken the opportunity to widen considerably the range of the debate, and in other instances to narrow it considerably. It is important that the House should have knowledge of what legislation means at the grass roots.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) spoke about people without PSV licences driving very heavy vehicles. In some cases they are allowed to do so because there is no hire or reward. That is something that we must examine, but we must remember that many people go to work in Public service vehicles that are not driven by someone in possession of a PSV licence. Many industrial firms get their people to work by such means. That is one of the matters that we shall be examining in the transport review.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) for his support for the Bill. We recognise that there is a need for more flexibility in European legislation. I understand the difficulties that will be faced by heavy goods vehicle operators and manufacturers in the interim period between 1st January and Royal Assent. The answer must lie in the Bill receiving a rapid passage in Committee and a speedy process to Royal Assent.
I spoke at some length about minibuses in an Adjournment debate. I was flattered to learn that certain organisations had reprinted my speech. That was done by the National Association of Youth Clubs. The Association held a conference on the basis of the debate. Since the 1930s the law has been clear on this matter. If charges are made in respect


of a vehicle carrying a number of passengers, a licence is required for the driver.
Various organisations have found ways of tackling the problem. Many teachers and others have taken the PSV test. Headmasters who have teachers who regularly drive minibuses should consider that possibility. It is a possibility that is open to various organisations. In the meantime, the Department is prepared to help any organisation which is uncertain of the path that it should take. We shall give all the help that we can to voluntary organisations and others.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) spoke of the anxieties about the Regulations that are felt in other countries. It is true that anxieties are widespread. A number of measures have been taken in conjunction with our European neighbours.

Mr. Frank Tomney: There is a file on my desk which interests me greatly which refers to EEC Regulations concerning intercontinental traffic and what are described as juggernauts. It is the first time that I have met the problem that arises from the issuing of licences and permits by Customs authorities both here and on the Continent. There seems to be something of a racket—this does not involve the Customs authorities—which enables unscrupulous drivers to exchange and obtain Customs clearance documents for lorries to which they have no entitlement. This applies especially to Germany and France. This is a matter that should be examined carefully in the general survey that the Department is about to undertake. The result of the racket is that hard-working small companies are being forced out of business. They are not able to obtain permits, while large companies have access to them.

Mr. Marks: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We are aware of this problem and there have been a number of Questions and Answers related to it. We are anxious that more of our operators should obtain permits. At the same time, we can understand the concern that is felt in the countries involved about the through-traffic which sometimes travels through two or three countries.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields spoke of the need to support other

European countries which want flexibility. Our transport industry and the trade unions through their own channels in the EEC, and through the Joint Advisory Committee on Social Questions, are putting forward a similar point of view.
The hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) spoke of the clause dealing with the place of prosecution. In the past the police have had to travel tremendous distances at times to provide evidence at a prosecution. If the Bill becomes law they will have the opportunity of having the evidence taken at the place where the offence is discovered.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough made a number of points which he said we should put forward at the EEC. A note has been taken of the various matters that he raised.
The hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) can say that his constituency was among the few counties, if I may use that expression for his area, which opposed entry to the EEC. Perhaps he is entitled, as few others are, to criticise our entry. I should emphasise that the Bill gives approval for the Secretary of State to introduce new Regulations should we have better Regulations coming from the EEC.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) spoke of the need to safeguard standards of safety among some operators. I appreciate the difficulties of enforcement. We are examining coach safety and the construction of coaches with our European neighbours.
The hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Watt) spoke of the practical problems of restricting hours of work in isolated areas and areas where livestock is transported. However, we must remember that men get tired as well as lambs. We must appreciate all the problems and we must safeguard against exploitation.
I am grateful for the interest of those who have attended the debate. Many of the matters that have been raised will be discussed further in the next few months. I look forward to meeting hon. Members from both sides of the Chamber in Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

FAIR EMPLOYMENT (NORTHERN IRELAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

5.49 p.m.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The purpose of the Bill is to promote equality of opportunity in employments and occupations in Northern Ireland between persons of differing religious beliefs and to work for the elimination of discrimination which is made unlawful by the Bill.
The principal objective of the Bill is essentially a moral one, that of ensuring that a person's opportunity to obtain employment and its benefits is determined, not by reference to the section of the Northern Ireland community from which he or she comes but according to his or her merit. This Bill should help to resolve some of the widespread feelings of grievance based on a sense of injustice which contributes to the divisions in Northern Ireland society today. As I will show later, these grievances come both from the minority and the majority community.
However, the Bill has an important economic as well as a moral significance. A year ago, when there was a high level of economic activity, there co-existed labour shortages in East and North Belfast and high unemployment in West Belfast. Firms with labour shortages found that their recruitment practices and employment patterns did not provide them with access to the main group of unemployed.
It is unlikely that many people in Northern Ireland doubt that religious discrimination in employment is practised in Northern Ireland to some degree. Even fewer would deny that belief in its practice on a wide scale is widespread and deep seated. Since such a belief can have very damaging consequences, the establishment of the facts is in itself an important and worthwhile objective which the Bill will help to achieve. The Bill makes religious and political discrimination unlawful and it provides machinery whereby remedies may be secured.
The Government therefore believe that this Bill is essential and it is basically concerned with actions, not attitudes. Although it is not the primary aim of the legislation to influence attitudes we hope that controlling actions may ultimately have this effect. It is important to remember that this Bill arises out of a Committee consisting of both sides of industry in Northern Ireland, chaired by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee), then Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, the Report being called "The Working Party on Discrimination in the Private Sector of Employment (in Northern Ireland)".
I pay tribute to the hon. Member and also to the hon. Member for South-end, West (Mr. Channon) who took the chair on the formation of the Committee. But while Ministers chaired the Committee, it consisted of representatives of the community in Northern Ireland, covering both sides of industry—the CBI, the Chamber of Commerce and the trade unions. It was they who formulated the policy, not the two hon. Members to whom I referred, or myself.

Mr. McCusker: What did the union representatives on the Committee say about their overtures in the past to end the so-called discrimination which existed in areas where they represented workers, and what did representatives of management, from the CBI, admit about the discrimination which they practised?

Mr. Orme: The hon. Member will know from the Report that those questions were examined in some depth. It is because discrimination existed and it was necessary to eradicate it that the Committee sat for such a considerable time, consulting every organisation in Northern Ireland and, nationally, the TUC and the CBI, and receiving both oral and written submissions.
The Bill, with one important exception, to which I will refer later, is based on the working party's Report. So the pressure for this legislation came from Northern Ireland industry, from the men and women involved.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: The Minister must surely be aware that allegations of discrimination have been made throughout the United Kingdom. Why does the Bill not apply


throughout the United Kingdom instead of just to Northern Ireland?

Mr. Orme: I know that there are problems in different parts of the United Kingdom, but with his knowledge of Northern Ireland, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate the special considerations there. Other Acts, such as the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, do apply in Great Britain.
The one significant change made by the Government is that, following representations from the trade unions, the public sector is also included as well as the private sector. Some people argue that this whole issue could be dealt with by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration but, of course, as the House well knows, he can deal only with a limited part of the public sector and would not touch what is a crucial factor, the private sector of employment within Northern Ireland, and can act only in respect of individual complaints formally made to him.
Some might ask whether legislation will eradicate religious discrimination in Northern Ireland. The answer to that, as the House knows and the working party recognised, is that, in itself, this will not have that effect but the important factor, as has been shown by the Race Relations Act and now the Sex Discrimination Act, is that it will be an important base from which to tackle the problem.
The working party quoted from the first Annual Report to the Race Relations Board why it was necessary to have antidiscrimination legislation, in the following terms:

"(a) A law is an unequivocal declaration of public policy.
(b) A law gives support to those who do not wish to discriminate but who feel compelled to do so by social pressures.
(c) A law gives protection and redress to minority groups.
(d) A law thus provides for the peaceful and orderly adjustment of grievances and the release of tensions.
(e) A law reduces prejudice by discouraging the behaviour in which prejudice finds expression."

That shows the importance of a legal backcloth here.
The fact that anti-social actions are the product of an underlying attitude is

no argument for the law not dealing with them where it is necessary to provide protection for the public. It is as necessary and appropriate for the law to obtain and provide remedies for actions harmful to individuals and society as a whole, which are the expression of religious or inter-communal prejudice, as it is for the law to counter other forms of harmful behaviour with which it deals daily.
While we want this Act to operate on a basis of co-operation and by means of persuasion and conciliation it is important that compulsory powers be available in the end. Both voluntary and compulsory approaches have a substantial rôle to play.
The House may be interested in the representations which I have received both inside and outside the House on this issue over the last 18 months or so affecting both communities. I will give one or two examples.
Mr. Glen Barr, a prominent member of the community in Northern Ireland, alleged victimisation of Protestants at the Grundig plant on 22nd November last year. The hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) drew my attention to inquiries about a nurse who was allegedly forced to resign by pressures at the same firm. The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Ross) and others had a meeting with the Secretary of State on 2nd February this year about reports that certain areas of employment in Londonderry are dominated by Roman Catholics. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Duffy) raised with me in a Parliamentary Question the balance of the work force at Harland and Wolff.
There are many other examples I could cite which have been put to me by leading representatives alleging that discrimination has taken place in industrial disputes on one side or the other.
Ernest Baird alleged that preference was given to Roman Catholics by the Northern Ireland Office on 6th February 1976. The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) knows of this. He was recently quoted on television dealing with alleged discrimination in the Northern Ireland Office. The way to deal with these accusations is to have an independent assessment. The Agency we are


to set up will be able to look at this matter independently and ascertain the facts.

Mr. James Molyneaux: The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the allegations made about the balance of personnel in the Northern Ireland Office. Is it contended that the Northern Ireland Office and various other Government Departments and agencies should be subject to inquiry by the Agency?

Mr. Orme: Yes. This is one of the reasons why the Government have extended the Agency's jurisdiction to the public sector. It will cover the whole of the public sector.
I would like to emphasise at this point that Her Majesty's Government would not contemplate the introduction by the Fair Employment Agency of quotas as a means of remedying past inequalities or for any other purpose. The working party was opposed to any form of quotas, or reverse discrimination, and we are in complete agreement with its view. The use of quotas would in any event involve acts of unlawful discrimination.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: There is a point I would like to raise which might help the right hon. Gentleman to elucidate the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux). Is it in contemplation that, if there were a complaint—for instance, about the composition of the employees of the Northern Ireland Office—the inquiries would result in a publication of the breakdown, by religion, of the persons there employed?

Mr. Orme: We would report to the House. It is not our intention that these figures would be published. It is the intention of the Bill to overcome this problem by having the Agency investigate the matter. In the final analysis the report would have to be made to the House.

Mr. Powell: But the Agency would publish the figures?

Mr. Orme: In certain circumstances.
I now turn to the contents of the Bill. Part I deals with the establishment of the Fair Employment Agency for Northern Ireland which will have the duties of promoting equality of oppor-

tunity in employments and occupations, working for the elimination of discrimination made unlawful by the Bill, reviewing employment patterns and investigating employment practices to identify the existence or otherwise of equality of opportunity, receiving and investigating complaints of unlawful discrimination and achieving remedies for the complainant where it finds a complaint to be well founded.
Clauses 1 and 2 and Schedule 1 are concerned with the functions and operation of the Agency which, in addition to the promotion of equality of opportunity and working for the elimination of unlawful discrimination, include activities of an educational nature, including research and publicity. We attach much importance to this facet of the Agency's functions since this will support and complement its other activities. The members of the Agency will be appointed by the head of the Department of Manpower Services in Northern Ireland. I would like to repeat the undertaking that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State gave in another place, that the Department of Manpower Services will normally consult with representatives of employers and employees in making these appointments.

Mr. James Kilfedder: Clause 1 states that the members of the Agency shall be appointed by the head of the Department of Manpower Services. Bearing in mind the schedule to the Northern Ireland Act 1974, does this mean that the members will be appointed by the civil servant who is the head of the Department or by the Minister?

Mr. Orme: By the Minister.
Part II, that is Clauses 3 to 15, and Schedules 2 to 5 are concerned with the promotion and provision of equality of opportunity. The concept of equality of opportunity is the corner stone of this Bill. Broadly it means the opportunity for persons of different religious beliefs, including those without any religious belief, to engage in employments and occupations on an equal basis, after making due allowance for any material difference in their suitability for the employment in question. We attach the greatest importance to a positive approach and believe that one of the prime tasks of the Agency will be to


encourage employers to adopt employment practices which provide equality of opportunity.
Clause 5 requires the Department of Manpower Services to prepare and publish a guide to good manpower policy and practice. This guide will contain recommendations as to policies and practices which, if adopted, will help promote equality of opportunity. Here I repeat another assurance given by my hon. Friend in another place, that representatives of employers and employees will be consulted by the Department in preparing the guide in addition to those authorities which the Bill requires it to consult.
This positive approach is demonstrated again in Clauses 6 to 10 and Schedule 3 which deal with the Declaration of Principle and Intent. We hope that most, if not all, employers and vocational organisations will sign this voluntary declaration of commitment to the principle of full equality of employment opportunity and the rejection of discrimination. By signing the Declaration employers will be entitled publicly to call themselves equal opportunity employers.
The remaining clauses of Part II, that is Clauses 11 to 15, with Schedules 4 and 5 relate to the function of the Agency to ascertain the existence or otherwise of equality of opportunity and, where this opportunity is absent, to achieve changes in employment practices to secure it. The Agency will be able to investigate the employment practices of any employer or vocational organisation which includes organisations of workers or employees to discover whether equality of opportunity is being provided by an individual employer or in an area of employment. It will also be possible for the Agency to investigate bodies which confer qualifications, persons with a statutory function of selecting others for employment by a third person, providers of training services and employment agencies.
In cases where the Agency finds that equality of opportunity does not exist, it is required to attempt to secure the provision of equality of opportunity first by conciliation. Failing this it may issue directions requiring the cessation or modification of offending practices.
Provision is made for the setting up of a Fair Employment Appeals Board

for hearing appeals against directions. If there is no appeal or the appeal fails, the Agency will be able to obtain an order from the court for their enforcement.
I turn now to Part III——

Mr. Powell: This is a convenient point at which to intervene again since the right hon. Gentleman is moving now to Part III. It is in Part II, as he has said, that the declaration of commitment occurs. The right hon. Gentleman made it clear that it is part of the duty of the Agency to police, as it were, the fulfilment of the Declaration of Principle and Intent. The point I would be grateful to have cleared up relates to the Declaration. As Schedule 3 shows, it forswears not only discrimination on the grounds of religious belief but that which takes place on the grounds of political opinion. The point I wish the right hon. Gentleman to clarify is whether the duties in Part II in relation to that Declaration of the Agency cover discrimination on grounds of political opinion.

Mr. Orme: We had to try to deal with the difficult point of identifying political discrimination and religious discrimination—because in many cases in Northern Ireland they are synonymous. Part III specifically mentions the political aspect, whereas Parts I and II do not. We shall have to discuss this matter in some detail. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to await the Committee stage, or perhaps my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be able to reply to the question later. One cannot give a simple answer, because this is a crucial point. It was one of the difficulties in drafting the Bill, and the right hon. Gentleman has put his finger on it. We think that it can be overcome because of what happens in Northern Ireland. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising the matter.
I now turn to Part III which, with Schedule 5, relates to unlawful discrimination. The Bill makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate on the grounds, and only on the grounds, of religious belief and political opinion and also by way of victimisation as regards the recruitment of new employees or his treatment of existing employees. Part III of the Bill also deals with discrimination against


contract workers, by vocational organisations, employment agencies and persons providing training and in the granting of authorities or other qualifications which facilitate the carrying on of employments or occupations.
Clause 24, with Schedule 5, requires the Agency to investigate complaints of discrimination made by individuals. Investigation and any subsequent consequential action, both conciliatory and through the courts, is undertaken by the Agency on behalf of the complainant.
The procedure following the completion of an investigation of a complaint is dealt with in Clauses 25 to 32.
When the Agency finds that unlawful discrimination has been committed, it must try to secure a settlement and in appropriate cases obtain an undertaking to abide by such a settlement. Should the Agency fail to obtain a voluntary settlement, it may issue a recommendation for action to be taken by the respondent in order to remedy the unlawful matter. An appeal to the county court against the finding of the Agency may be made by either the complainant or the respondent. Finally, should a recommendation or an undertaking not be complied with, the Agency may apply to the county court for a remedy for the unlawful action. This may take the form of damages or an injunction against repeating the action or both.
Part IV of the Bill deals with other unlawful acts. Clause 33 makes it unlawful to publish an advertisement which could reasonably be understood to indicate an intention to do an act which is unlawful under the Bill. Clause 36 enables the Agency to apply to the county court for an order restraining publishers from continuing or repeating unlawful advertisements.
Clauses 34 and 35 deal with aiding or inducing others to discriminate; and with liability for employees' and agents' acts.
Part V of the Bill specifies a number of exceptions. They include employment as a clergyman, cases where a person's religious belief or political opinion is a genuine occupational qualification for a particular job—I am looking at some hon. Member opposite now—and employment in a private household. Also exempted are acts done incompliance with existing legislation; for the purpose of

safeguarding national security or of protecting public safety or public order; and in order to comply with the provisions of charitable instruments.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Do the right hon. Gentleman's comments include security businesses? I am referring, not to the wider field of security but to individual security for which there is a Government subsidy.

Mr. Orme: No. The phrase in the Bill is "national security". A firm which employed security guards would have to comply with the Bill.
In order to keep the work load which we expect to fall upon the Agency within reasonable limits, initially we intend to except small firms employing 25 or fewer people for the first two years after the Bill comes into force and firms employing 10 or fewer for a further third year. I would like to repeat the undertaking that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State gave in another place that small firms, while excepted from the Bill, will be able to seek the assistance and advice of the Agency in planning how to meet the requirements of the Bill when their exemption ends.
Hon. Members will recognise, as did the working party, that because of the basis on which education is organised in Northern Ireland it is desirable that teachers in schools should be excepted from the Bill for the time being. The Bill makes provision both for the keeping of this exception under review by the Agency and for providing my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with the necessary powers to remove or limit it by means of an order subject to approval in draft by both Houses of Parliament.

Mr. Kilfedder: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why teachers are excepted from the Bill? They teach young people and belong to both sections of the community.

Mr. Orme: That is another matter which hon. Members will probably wish to discuss in some depth in Committee. The Government seriously considered it, but having consulted both communities, we concluded that there was genuine difficulty about getting an agreement or an acceptance. Although we have not exempted other people in school employment, teachers are exempted. However, the


matter can be considered. We were asked by the Northern Ireland Commission dealing with the question of human rights to keep the matter under review. The Commission has looked at this point, but the hon. Member will appreciate that it is an extremely difficult one.
All employment in education other than that of teachers in schools will, of course, come fully within the scope of the Bill from the outset.
Part VI of the Bill deals with a number of miscellaneous matters of which the most important are those contained in Clauses 50 to 54, under which Government Departments and public bodies will be made subject to investigation by the Agency and to the remedies for unlawful discrimination in the same way as private employers, subject, of course, to safeguards about the disclosure of information by the Crown. Should the Agency consider that the employment practices of a Government Department or public body should be modified, it will make a report to the Government Department concerned and such a report must be laid before Parliament. That answers the point raised by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). He asked whether the facts would be made known if Government bodies were examined. A report would have to be made to Parliament. The Bill will apply in its full rigour to local authorities.
The remainder of Part VI deals with general and supplemental matters and includes the interpretation clause. Clause 59 enables different parts of the Bill to be brought into operation at different times.
As the House will see, the Bill establishes an independent body, the Fair Employment Agency for Northern Ireland, with the duties of promoting equality of opportunity in employments and occupations, and of working for the elimination of discrimination made unlawful by the Bill.
It will be seen from the terms of the Bill that the Government, as the working party did, reject the implementation of quotas as a means of remedying past inequalities or for any other purpose. This would not work and is not desired within Northern Ireland itself. But the Bill lays a basis for creating a framework and removing some of the suspicion and

actions which have been practised in employment within Northern Ireland.
The Government and the van Straubenzee Report examined how discrimination is dealt with in other countries. In some places a quota system has been introduced in an attempt to redress the balance in employment and to defeat discrimination in other sectors of society. We completely reject that system. My experience as a Minister has been that quotas will not resolve the problem in Northern Ireland. A two-thirds to one-third system is not the answer. The only answer is for the two communities to come together and to accept that this is their only way forward.
If some people claim that this matter is greatly exaggerated, they have nothing to fear from the implementation of this Bill, for it provides what is needed—a fair-minded and independent body which can deal with these facts in the interests of Northern Ireland as a whole.
The Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights, in its first Annual Report, attached great importance to this Bill and said that "early implementation is vital". Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, in its "Better Life For All" campaign, has highlighted
the right to live free from violence, sectarianism, intimidation, and discrimination,
a right which will be enhanced by this Bill.
As I stated earlier, the economic factor is a vital one. Northern Ireland faces critical times on the economic front. Its 1·5 million people, with the problems the Province faces, cannot afford a sectarian division in industry, as they cannot afford a sectarian division in the political field.

6.22 p.m.

Mr. Airey Neave: I congratulate the Minister of State on the way he moved the Second Reading. The Bill is essential and important and we welcome its objectives for a number of reasons, though I wish to discuss the intended methods of implementation. We shall have an important and possibly rather long Committee stage.
There will be sincere differences about the way the Bill's provisions should be carried out. I am glad to join the Minister in acknowledging the contribution of the working party, particularly of


my hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and for Southend, West (Mr. Channon). The Minister of State has said that the Bill provides an important base from which to work, and that is the right way to look at it. I agree that there is a need for a law as a declaration of public policy on discrimination.
There are quite a number of difficult matters I wish to raise before the Committee stage. As Lord Donaldson said on Second Reading in another place, it would be foolish to expect the Bill on its own to provide equality of opportunity or stop unlawful discrimination in Northern Ireland.
I should like to explain some of our reservations but I agree that the Bill may help to change attitudes, though I understand that it is primarily concerned with action. This is the point made by the van Straubenzee Working Party and the reason why the Bill has been under consideration for some time. In the present context of violence in Northern Ireland, it is necessary to provide as much assurance as possible to people against discrimination in both public and private employment. It is useful to have a guide to manpower policy and practice.
The Conservative Party has been in touch with the CBI and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, both of which accept the need for this legislation but have some fear about its ultimate effect in some regards.
In Committee we ought to look very carefully at the powers given to the Agency and consider them in some detail in our discussions on Clauses 6 to 12. These powers represent a considerably wider range of authority for the Agency than any similar body has under the Race Relations or Sex Discrimination Acts or, in particular, the Government's new White Paper on race relations which I have just been reading. I have noticed a shift in opinion since the time of the Race Relations Act away from giving the Board power to litigate and investigate each complaint. The powers of litigation and investigation will not be carried out by the new Race Relations Commission whose establishment is recommended in the White Paper. It will

carry out what is described as a more strategic rôle.
The process of investigating individual complaints has become cumbersome and protracted under the Race Relations Act, which is why the Government have apparently decided to shift in the direction of permitting individuals to have access to legal redress through industrial tribunals and county courts. I wonder whether this system should be considered in relation to the powers of the Agency to be set up under the Bill, and I should like the Minister to comment on this in replying to the debate.
There is a conflict in definitions between Clause 3 and Clause 16. Under Clause 3(1), equality of opportunity is defined as:
equality of opportunity between persons of different religious beliefs.
Due allowance is made under Clause 3(2) for
any material difference in their suitability
in relation to persons seeking employment. Under Clause 16, discrimination means:
discrimination on the ground of religious belief or political opinion.
Lord Donaldson was asked about this difference during the Report stage in another place on 26th June. He said that the definition of discrimination was based on the van Straubenzee Report. That is quite correct, but under Clause 6 employers' organisations have to make a declaration of commitment to the principle of equality of opportunity. There could be considerable confusion, especially because of the qualification in Clause 3(2):
due allowance being made for any material difference in their suitability".
We have two definitions of equality of opportunity an d discrimination. It appears that this sensible qualification
due allowance being made for any material difference in their suitability
does not apply under Clause 16. This is a Committee point, but it is a matter of some substance and Lord Donaldson did not give a very clear answer to it in another place.

Mr. Orme: It was the opinion of the van Straubenzee Report, which the Government accept, that we ought to include political opinions because there are


instances—one can think of many in Northern Ireland—when a person could say that he was not discriminating against another on religious grounds but then carried out discrimination purely because of a person's political views. Because of the structure of society in Northern Ireland, that would be identical to straight religious discrimination. These definition problems are extremely complicated, but the Government feel it is absolutely crucial that we should cover both religious and political discrimination. We can go into this matter in detail in Committee and discuss why the Government have reached this conclusion.

Mr. Neave: I see that the Government want to cover both religious and political discrimination and I agree that it is the point which was raised just now by another hon. Member in a slightly different form. My difficulty is that Clause 16 does not include the reference to "material difference in…suitability" of a person who seeks employment. That has to be further investigated in Committee.
Clause 5, which I welcome, is a guide to manpower policy and practice. An assurance was given in another place and by the Minister of State that there would be consultation with both sides of industry. I do not see why consultation should be only with the Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights. I hope that in Committee a specific amendment will be considered to include consultation with both sides of industry.
Clauses 11 to 15 are in a rather controversial area because of the question of quotas which was raised in another place. In talks with various organisations interested in the Bill, we came across considerable fear that quotas could be introduced by the back door. There have been assurances about this, but Lord Donaldson refused to accept an amendment expressing specific prohibition of quotas. I am not sure in present circumstances in Northern Ireland that it would not be better to write in a specific prohibition of quotas. The van Straubenzee Report considered that quotas would not reconcile the communities or do any good, and I do not think that anyone believes that they would.
Clauses 16 and 17 raise several points, one of which I will mention. Nowhere

does the Bill state that it is unlawful for an employee or group of employees to discriminate. Nothing makes it unlawful for them to down tools on account of the religious or political views of an individual employee. It is true that Clause 34 prohibits incitement, and apparently both employer and employee could be liable under Clauses 34 and 35, but it is noticeable that employees who discriminate in the sense of refusing to work with an individual on account of his religious or political views are not covered by Clauses 16 and 17.
The question which has been asked many times about the Bill is "What is a 'pattern of discrimination' and how is it to be assessed?" How can the Agency investigate the religious beliefs of a particular group of employees? That will be one of the practical difficulties. For example, Clause 12(2)(a) involves a decision by an employer, but what happens if an employee decides not to disclose his religion as permitted under the Bill? According to Paragraph 8(3) of Schedule 5, a person shall not be compelled to disclose any information about his religious belief for the purposes of investigation. How is a pattern of discrimination to be assessed if it is not possible to investigate the religious belief of particular employees because they refuse to disclose it?

Mr. Orme: An individual has the right not to answer, and he cannot be penalised for so doing. The Agency will still be able to investigate. Unfortunately, everyone seems to know the religion of the people who are working at various firms. That is constantly made known to me, and there are means of ascertaining it, but a person cannot be forced to disclose that information.

Mr. Neave: The right hon. Gentleman is really agreeing with me. It places the employer in the difficulty that, although he can ask a person what is his religion, he cannot compel that person to disclose it. We are in difficulty in assessing the "pattern of discrimination" if an individual decides not to disclose his religion.
We should also like to know how the pattern is to be assessed. Is it to be assessed by reference to the entire factory or to a department? These problems are not insuperable but we shall


want to raise them in Committee. We have in mind that subsections (3) and (4) of Clause 16 go very wide in the matter of victimisation by an employer.
I welcome the Bill and its objectives. It will require much good will and sense on the part of all concerned in the realities of life in Northern Ireland. We hope that it will prevent some actions that might further aggravate those harsh realities. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that our object must be to remove suspicion, but we shall have a large number of points to raise in Committee.

6.37 p.m.

Mr. McCusker: I do not accept the Minister's view that there is a widespread belief in Northern Ireland that religious discrimination exists or that there is a widespread practice of religious discrimination. I do not deny that there are individual instances of discrimination, as probably there are in every society for different reasons.
I find it extremely hard to understand how both sides of industry can come to Stormont Castle, lay out their dirty linen and tell the Minister that we were guilty of massive, systematic and gross religious discrimination which we have done nothing about all these years. My opinion, which I expressed then, is that if those who expressed that view were so convinced of their wrong-doings they should have done something to rectify it. The individual Protestant or Catholic worker cannot be guilty of discrimination. An individual employer or representatives of the employees could have made their case if they felt as strongly about it as the Report suggests.
The Minister cited the problem of the employer in one area looking for employees and not being able to get them when in an adjoining area there were thousands of unemployed. The reason why those people are not employed in that factory is not that the employer is discriminating against them, as the Minister well knows. I have been employed in industry, I have offered employment in industry in Northern Ireland and I have a wide range of contacts with industrialists and others. My experience is that what the Minister suggests does not exist on anything like the scale he mentioned. I should hate to think that

anyone in the House believed that ICI, Courtaulds, Enkalon, Monsanto, or Du Pont—I could go on listing firms ad infinitum—had been or would be guilty of the malpractices which he suggested.
I believe that almost everyone in Northern Ireland would support the stated objective of the Bill:
to promote equality of opportunity in employment in Northern Ireland between people of different religious beliefs".
As I have said, however, I seriously dispute the suggestion that equality of opportunity does not exist already. If any hon. Member on this side of the House wishes to convince me otherwise, he had better have the evidence because I shall be hard to convince. Professor Richard Rose, whom I quoted in an earlier debate, when he examined discrimination even in "petty-sectarian" councils, could find no evidence of discrimination in employment. But he was not listened to when the bogus civil rights organisations and others produced their statistics.
The Report on which the Bill is based was produced during what I consider to be the "sack-cloth and ashes" period of Northern Ireland, when this House destroyed our Parliament and threw our country into a state of turmoil, and people who were genuinely and sincerely trying to find a way out of what had happened were perhaps prepared to accept guilt for anything and never examined just what they were admitting to or what they or others were supposed to be guilty of.
I put questions to people connected with Lord Feather's Commission. I said "You are an employer. Did you practise religious discrimination?" The reply was "No". I asked "Do you think your associates practised religious discrimination?" Again the answer was "No". They I asked "Why, then, do you support the Bill?" The reply was "Sure, we have to do something." That is the attitude we see in the Chamber tonight—"We have to do something."

Mr. Orme: The hon. Gentleman refers to the Commission on Human Rights. I have spoken to the representatives of the CBI and they are in favour of the principle of the Bill, although they may have Committee points which they wish to put. The trade unions are in favour of the principle of the Bill, though they,


too, may have Committee points to put. Why are these organisations pressing for the Bill?

Mr. McCusker: I have tried to determine that by questioning and probing. One feels that sometimes, unfortunately, these people are as out of touch with reality as are politicians in this House. I know examples of individual companies and organisations where an examination of the ratios of religious beliefs would indicate a bias on one side or the other. Those organisations are not confined to East and West Belfast. They are to be found elsewhere in Northern Ireland. As the right hon. Gentleman himself has said, it does not apply simply to one religious grouping.
The factors bringing that situation about are not necessarily the result of religious discrimination but include, for example, the breakdown of law and order in parts of Northern Ireland, the location of the works, the composition of the local population and the availability of particular skills. None of these factors will be influenced by the Bill. That is why I object to it.
If anyone thinks that I am painting too rosy a picture, I refer him to the tragic events in the Shankill Road last week. Who in this House would have believed, after the years of murder, hate and destruction in West Belfast, that Catholic and Protestant workers would still be travelling in company transport up the Shankill Road every morning to work? That is just one example of the cooperation and good working conditions which have continued to exist in many factories in Northern Ireland during the last seven years. I say that because it is my own experience, backed up by all the available evidence I have obtained. In the desert of terrorism, murder and arson, the work-place in Northern Ireland has been almost the last place of sanity. It has been almost the one place where people could behave normally.
I object strongly to the Bill because it will introduce an element which could well destroy that situation. Frequently it has been encouraging to see Catholic and Protestant work-people brushing out the factory or shop after bombing or arson and putting out the notice "Business as usual".
My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson) earlier today reminded us that the IRA burned down a factory in his constituency this weekend. The work force of 130 was exactly fifty-fifty in religious denomination. That is something that I am sure the Minister of State welcomes. But the introduction of a Bill like this will, in such a situation, lead only perhaps to suspicion, distrust and mistrust. That in turn will undermine what I considered to be almost the only area of sanity left in our country.
The Bill sets up an Agency which will have the power to force employers to keep a register of the religious affiliations of their employees. How are employers to find out what those affiliations are? It seems that, whether they examine birth certificates or church records or interview spouses, they will find the evidence and there will be lists, and every employer in Northern Ireland will keep a register of the religious affiliations of his employees.

Mr. Tom Litterick: I have no experience of employment in Ulster but I have experience of it in the West of Scotland. On such a matter of identity, there is no difficulty. I was a personnel manager in the Clyde Valley, and I could have told the hon. Gentleman at the time, with perhaps an error of less than 1 per cent., the denominational identity of every person in that labour force. It is not difficult. In the West of Scotland people are acutely aware of these matters.

Mr. McCusker: I am not disputing that. It might be difficult, but it will be done. I am disputing the necessity for it. I worked for two years in the personnel department of a large industrial establishment in Craigavon, and 25 people were employed in my department. When the sectarian violence broke out in 1970 in Lurgan, a girl came to me in the office and said "I am glad that you are a Catholic—that means there are two of us anyway". So I, who am accused also of Protestant bigotry, was firmly thought by that girl to be a Catholic. I had employed Catholics in that establishment as well as Protestants. If anyone had come to me then and told me to keep a register of my employees recording their religious convictions so that I could keep a correct religious balance, I would have chased him away.

Mr. Litterick: I believe, from what the hon. Gentleman has said, that he takes the point I made about identity being easy. Such knowledge is available to those who make the employment decisions. Notwithstanding the fact that people in a given work-place may not be aware of the denominational identities of their colleagues, someone in the personnel department, for example, will be fully aware of the situation and will be able to exercise control in order to achieve whatever the objective is—a balance or an imbalance. The fact remains, so it seems to me, that the information is readily available.

Mr. McCusker: I do not dispute that, as I said earlier. But in Northern Ireland we have had an industrial relations record twice as good as any in Great Britain in a period when the sectarian conflict might have been expected to exacerbate industrial relations problems, with a member of one religious persuasion arguing with someone belonging to the other about problems in their street and with that argument flowing over into the quality of their work, the co-operation they got and so on. We have not had that. Industrial relations have been extremely good.
We now have a Bill which will introduce an element of suspicion and which will create in the work force divisions which so far have not existed. The proposed Agency is empowered to investigate discrimination. It will come to me as an employer of 50 or 60 people. I presume that it will suggest to me its fears that I am practising religious discrimination. It will ask me to produce a register or it will produce a register of the religious affiliations of my employees. Then it will go through it with me and say "The prima facie evidence seems to be that you are guilty of discriminating." Does it end there? No. It has to make certain recommendations about affirmative action, not about quotas but about remedying the situation. What does that mean?
Let us suppose that I advertise for more employees. I am careful that there is nothing in my advertisement to discriminate against anyone applying. I have yet to see a discriminating advertisement in Northern Ireland. I know that in 1959 Terence O'Neill advertised for a Protestant to keep house for him,

but apart from that I have not seen any advertisement by a large or medium employer of labour showing any discrimination.

Mr. Orme: This is really a Committee point, but the hon. Gentleman knows that anyone wishing to attract one section of the community puts an advertisement in either the Irish News or the Protestant Telegraph which will be seen by a certain section of the community. Under this Bill, such an advertisement would not only have to be non-discriminatory but would also have to be displayed on a basis by which both sides of the community could have access.

Mr. McCusker: I hope that the Government are now prepared to subsidise employers to ensure that they advertise widely enough. I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's point. I know that the Government and public bodies advertise across the board in various papers. Last week in the Irish News one page was filled completely with public appointments. Another page was filled completely with comments about Mr. Stagg, exhortations to the IRA to continue its violence and calls to the people designed eventually to lead to the situation which developed in Northern Ireland over the weekend. I could not help asking myself whether that public money was being properly spent.

Mr. Orme: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will also refer to the full-page advertisement put in by the Government giving the facts about Mr. Stagg so that they could be clearly understood in Northern Ireland—an advertisement, I may say, which was widely welcomed throughout the United Kingdom.

Mr. McCusker: I do not know what relevance that has to my comments.

Mr. Orme: The hon. Gentleman mentioned Mr. Stagg.

Mr. McCusker: I was querying whether an employer could ultimately afford to advertise in every paper and whether all employers would feel it necessary to advertise in a paper which, on the admission even of the Republican clubs, now allows its columns to be used for very dubious purposes.
Anyway, let us say that I advertise in every paper in Northern Ireland and that


I am looking to try to remedy the balance. I do not get any Catholics applying——

Mr. Orme: Why?

Mr. McCusker: I do not know why. I am advertising for employees. I will argue that if those same Catholics were the men who alleged that I was guilty of discrimination they would be more keen to apply so that they had grounds for their argument. But I do not get any applicants. Even if I have signed the declaration and want a change, I do not get applicants. What do I do? There is not very much that I can do. The result is that I cannot get a reasonable balance.
Supposing that I suddenly find myself confronted with the problem, which is relatively easy, that all the Protestants seem to be better qualified than the Catholic applicants. I would not search my conscience. I would employ the Protestants. It would not do anything to remedy the situation, but I would employ people on merit.
But what if I am looking to take positive action and I find myself with two groups both with equal qualifications? I am faced with an order from the Agency saying that I have to take positive and affirmative action to change the situation. Then I employ the Catholics. I have to make a positive decision to employ those persons which is influenced substantially by an order served upon me to the effect that it would be in my best interests to remedy the situation among my employees which has been discovered by the Agency.
That will start rumours and suspicion among my work force. Before long, we shall have all the problems which for so long we have tried to keep out of industry in Northern Ireland. The Minister can deny till the cows come home that there will not be quotas to allay fears. But when there are 60,000 unemployed, when it is know that the Agency man has been round and when it is known in the factory that the balance is not what every perfectionist would like, people will begin to wonder whether it is their turn next. Take the case of a man whose absenteeism has been a little suspect, whose timekeeping has not been all that it might be or whose productivity is not up to scratch.

He is brought in for a disciplinary hearing and he is told "We cannot put up with this any longer". His immediate cry will be "This is discrimination. You want me out so that you can bring in a Prod"—or "Taig", as the case may be.
The Minister is fooling himself if he does not think that that will be the result of the Bill. My colleagues and I were elected on a manifesto which said in so many words that we believed in equal opportunities for all and special privileges for none. That applies to employment as well as to politics.

Mr. Orme: I am interested to hear that. Only this morning I looked at the manifesto of the UUUC on this very point. The hon. Gentleman's party subscribed to a Bill of Rights. This is an issue of some discussion and debate in this country. If we had a Bill of Rights, the present Bill would be one part of it. Apparently, the hon. Gentleman and his Friends intend to divide the House on the basis that they are opposed in principle to the Bill whereas on paper they are supposed to be in favour of what the Bill stands for.

Mr. McCusker: We are opposed to anything which draws conclusions from purely statistical information and tries to remedy an almost abstract situation. We would support easier access to the courts where there was an individual case of discrimination to be met. We would advocate an extension of the office of the Commissioner of Complaints in order to bring it down to the grass roots level. Let us give him an office in every employment exchange in Northern Ireland so that the individual who feels aggrieved and discriminated against, instead of signing on and then going away to mumble into his beer, can go next door and lodge his complaint.
Let us deal with this issue on the basis of individual complaints. Unfortunately, the Bill is concerned not with rectifying individual grievances but with arbitrary interference in the working conditions of the people of Northern Ireland. It is setting up a body which will find the justification for its interference as it goes along. It will be required to produce statistical information which will indicate that a work force is not balanced as some people would have it, and that is all the justification that is required.
Unfortunately, the Government have introduced in the Bill a provision which


is difficult to understand. I had to dig fairly hard to find it. It is in Clause 57(3) and it introduces the concept of unintentional discrimination. It is upon that that the Bill is based. It is a pity that the Government included it in the Bill; it is that
any reference to failure to provide equality of opportunity includes a reference to unintentional failure.
It means that if an employer did not discriminate but it could be shown from his work force that there appeared to be discrimination, he would be guilty of that offence and would pay the price accordingly.
We would support any measure to deal with the problem on a proper basis. But we have never run away from unpopular decisions and we have never been afraid to disagree with fashionable propositions. It is because we believe the Bill to be dangerously wrong for Northern Ireland that we shall oppose it in the Lobby, and we hone that we shall have the support of other sensible hon. Members.

7.2 p.m.

Mr. John Watkinson: I listened to the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) with interest, because he seemed to indicate that the Bill was unnecessary and untimely in the Northern Ireland context. He seemed almost to suggest that there was no religious discrimination at present in Belfast. Perhaps I may declare an interest in that my family comes from Belfast. It is a Protestant family from the Ravenhill Road area. I spent a good deal of my boyhood in Belfast during the summer vacations.
A great deal of my time in Belfast was spent in the company of my grandfather. He was a pillar of the church. He went to Mountpottinger church all his life and he was regarded by his fellows as a man of outstanding Christian virtue. But my grandfather was a member of Carson's army, drilled in the hills outside Belfast, and believed in Protestant domination in Northern Ireland and in the continuation of that domination. I know from my experience that there were certainly areas of that town in which only Protestants could expect to be given employment.
The hon. Member for Armagh asked for examples. I understand that Harland and Wolff is a stronghold of Protestant-

ism in Belfast. Perhaps he wants another example. I think that in 1969 Fermanagh County Council employed 360 personnel in its administrative offices. Of that number more than 330 were Protestant, the rest being Catholics. Of course, the hon. Member for Armagh could say that there were no suitable Catholic applicants for the jobs and that the 330 Protestants were superior to all the Catholics who applied, but I find that difficult to believe.

Mr. McCusker: Will the hon. Gentleman give the source of his information about Fermanagh County Council? I can produce evidence to contradict what he has said. Does he not accept my point that there are examples of unbalanced work forces where the lack of balance has been created by factors other than the malignant desire to discriminate?

Mr. Watkinson: I concede that other factors may be involved. Unfortunately, I do not have the statistics with me about Fermanagh and so I cannot give the hon. Member the precise source. The facts were in a book, and I shall let the hon. Member have it afterwards to give him a chance to refute the point. From my limited experience of Northern Ireland, I can definitely say that there is discrimination on religious grounds.
The Bill is a modest step in the right direction. The law has a certain rôle to play in these matters in so far as it can be declaratory. It serves to declare what we in this Parliament see as the obligations of the people of this country towards employment in Northern Ireland.
I have tried to ask myself why people such as my grandfather and the rest of my family believed in the need to preserve Protestant control in Northern Ireland. I believe that there are two factors behind this which the English find difficult to understood. During the angry exchanges which took place this afternoon, the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) made a valid point about the English not understanding Northern Ireland. I think he is absolutely right in saying that if the events which occurred in Northern Ireland over the past few days had taken place in this country there would be debates, questions and uproar in the House. I think that the hon. Member possibly misinterpreted the response from this side of the House in so far as we regarded what he said as an unwarranted


attack upon the Secretary of State. However, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Irish problem by the English.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I did not offer criticism of the Secretary of State having to come to England. I offered criticism of his office telling us that he was in Northern Ireland when he was not.

Mr. Watkinson: I do not want to get involved in that. I was saying that the British fail to understand the Northern Ireland problem. One of the key elements of that problem is the religious element, which the Bill attempts to deal with. There is, in my experience, a religious commitment in that part of the country which is totally alien to the rest of the United Kingdom. It can be said that England is not a religious country in the sense that Northern Ireland is. I remember as a boy in Northern Ireland that the only thing one heard on a Sunday was the sound of feet as the people walked to church. One would never experience that in this country.
We do not understand the religious significance of the Northern Ireland situation. It is linked with another factor which is not comprehended over here—the land factor. A great deal of the problems of Northern Ireland and the Protestant response to those problems is linked to the possession and security of land.
The border is the issue in elections, and people such as my grandfather, who was a railwayman, consistently voted for the Unionist Party—a Conservative-dominated party at the time—totally against their class interests. That is not understood in the Labour movement in this country and it is difficult to explain or to understand. For decades working people have voted not in terms of class interests but on surface religious grounds. That is linked to the question which is fundamental to any peoples, the defence of their homeland. It is basic, and has informed the politics in Northern Ireland for generations and caused people like my grandfather to support Unionists year in and year out.
Thus the religious issue is not fully comprehended in this country, nor is the question of land and the preservation of the State. In this country people have not had to face this issue for centuries.

The people of Northern Ireland may feel that the legislation has little or nothing to do with their problems. There is a conflict between what the people in Northern Ireland see as defending their interests and the typically English response to that—a compromise and a measure such as this.
I see that the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) nods his head, but hon. Members must understand that if they wish to remain part of the United Kingdom they must expect hon. Members to respond in the historical context of the House and find solutions within the parameters of our experiences here.

Mr. Kevin McNamara: I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend in full flow. I have been carefully listening to his analysis, as in large part we have a common inheritance. My hon. Friend has talked about the Bill as a compromise. The committee which drew up the Report that was the foundador of the Bill was chaired in a distinguished manner by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee), but much that came out of it was the brainchild of Irish trade unionists and employers.

Mr. Watkinson: I am pleased my hon. Friend made that point, and I shall try to come to it shortly. I was going to talk in the wider context about the compromise that we in the House wish to see in Northern Ireland, namely, the compromise or coalition solution, because that is the only way in which the British people would face the problems which the Northern Irish are now facing. It is difficult, as the right hon. Member for Down, South and the hon. Member for Antrim, North said when they talked about wanting interdependence within the United Kingdom.
I say to hon. Members that they will have to accept legislation coming from this Chamber which is contrary to their basic interests. They will have to decide ultimately what they mean by loyalty to the Crown, because in the end it is the House which will decide. Our decisions will be taken within the context of our history and we shall be pushing compromise solutions on to them. That is a problem which they must face.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr.


McNamara) for pointing out that the Bill has the support of the Northern Ireland trade unionists. I regard this as a hope, perhaps a realisation of the need to come to terms with the problem and to produce some form of compromise.
I listened with interest to the proposals made by the hon. Member for Armagh. He pointed out the difficulties that might arise under the Bill, including the employment problems. If the right hon. Member for Down, South speaks, he will be able to point out the illogicalities of the Bill. The fundamental flaw and danger in bringing forward such legislation is that we might make the law into an ass—and I speak as a lawyer. We are introducing legislation that we cannot enforce. That concerns me as a lawyer. But I think that the law has a role to play and that we have a responsibility and an obligation forcibly to declare certain beliefs and principles. I appreciate that exceptions may be found, that the legislation might be riddled with confusion and that it may have little direct effect upon the situation in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Orme: I am sure my hon. Friend will agree, as I said when moving the Second Reading, that the Bill will not eradicate discrimination but that, like the Race Relations Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, it will act as a backcloth. The Race Relations Act is important, not because it enforces the law but because the vast majority of people want to carry out the law. That is the basis for this Bill.

Mr. Watkinson: My right hon. Friend expresses my feelings on the Bill more cogently than I. We must be prepared to stand up and be counted, and I hope the Bill will have the effects which my right hon. Friend has spelt out to the House.

7.19 p.m.

Mr. William van Straubenzee: I have a deep commitment to the Bill which I will spell out briefly. As kind references have been made to me—and I am obliged to the Minister of State for what he said—it is important to state clearly that the Report which is the foundation of much of the Bill is essentially the work of men and women resident in, owing a loyalty to and having

a deep obligation towards that part of the United Kingdom to which the Bill refers.
Reference has rightly been made to the part played by what I shall describe as the Northern Ireland TUC—I purposely describe that organisation wrongly for the sake of clarity—and to the Northern Ireland CBI and the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Trade. But a powerful part was also played by Northern Ireland civil servants who have just as much a loyalty and commitment to Northern Ireland as the others. They would not wish me to name names, but some of those most direcly concerned properly appear by name, giving up their customary anonymity. There was only one Englishman—although he had a Dutch background, which made it slightly more acceptable—and he was in the chair. [Interruption.] Fortunately, I did not get here in 1688. My family were wise enough to see whether the revolution worked and waited until 1745 in order to suppress the Scots. However, that is another matter entirely.
The serious point is that this was, is and remains a work by Northern Irish men and women deeply committed to Northern Ireland and with a very great knowledge of the work force and the practices of the Province, working, as the Minister has said, over a considerable period. As an aside, I should like to say that in the midst of the difficulties, changes and problems of Northern Ireland, I still do not think that we in this House in particular have ever allowed sufficiently for the balance and stability which has been given to public administration by the Northern Ireland Civil Service. That is why I was so anxious to mention them.
In many ways I thought that the speech to which we listened—I listened in great sadness—from the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) gives us the clue, in part, as to why we actually have a problem in Northern Ireland. The House will recall that with great eloquence—and I have no doubt, total sincerity—the hon. Member has argued passionately that there really is no problem of the kind of which we are talking and which makes the Bill necessary. Let me seek to deal with that argument.
Let the hon. Member first just cast his eye down Appendix 1 of the Report


and look at the range of persons who gave evidence in this delicate and difficult matter. Let him look at those who are starred and of whom it is recorded that they were "interviewed at length". So indeed they were. I well remember it. I remember long discussions. Let the hon. Member look at the breadth of view represented by those witnesses. No one for one moment—I am sure that the hon. Member would not—could say of us that we drew our evidence from one particular source or were unreasonably biased in one particular direction. We listened, examined and interrogated at very considerable length—so, in a matter as delicate as this, we should—right across the divide of Northern Ireland.
As a result of that, and as a result of the expertise of employers, trade unionists and chambers of commerce, and of the expertise of Government servants of distinction, too, we were able to say what we said. It is important to remember what we said in paragraph 11. Let us remember what we did say, rather than what some people assert, apparently, in the course of this argument. We said:
It is right to record however that, notwithstanding such differences of opinion as there may be on the questions of extent and origin, we found general acceptance of the validity of the basic assumption underlying our terms of reference that religious discrimination exists to some degree as a fact of life in employment in Northern Ireland today. Further, we found widespread agreement in principle that where it exists it ought to be dealt with in the interests of social justice and human dignity, and of the social stability which's a prerequisite of economic expansion in Northern Ireland.

Mr. McCusker: First, I did not deny that religious discrimination probably exists to some degree in Northern Ireland. What was quoted to us was that there was a widespread belief—I think they were the words—that religious discrimination was practised in Northern Ireland. The suggestion was that religious discrimination was practised in a widespread fashion there. Is the hon. Gentleman really suggesting that this list of bodies and individuals actually submitted to him their belief that widespread discrimination was practised in Northern Ireland?

Mr. van Straubenzee: I am saying that the distinguished persons who gave

evidence, either verbally—particularly those who gave it verbally—or, to an extent, in written form, enabled us to come to the conclusion to which I have just drawn the attention of the House.

Mr. McCusker: It is different.

Mr. van Straubenzee: No, it was not different at all. I am standing by every word in the Report. I am not saying that in every place of employment in Northern Ireland the working party found that there was discrimination, for such would quite clearly not be a proper deduction to be made. However, I am saying that from many of these sources there was an understanding and an acceptance that religious discrimination exists to some degree as a fact of life in employment, and that there was a widespread agreement in principle that where it exists it ought to be dealt with. I think that it is on the second aspect that the hon. Gentleman and I part company, because, in my view at least, he would have some reservations about the methods to be used in the Bill.
However, as one who was present I can only say that I recall vividly receiving evidence and representations to this effect from people of very different political and religious beliefs in Northern Ireland, and when that can happen I believe that at the minimum this House should take account of it and, preferably, should act.
Secondly, I must simply say that I do not remember any more unpleasant facet of what in many respects was for me a fascinating period of just under one and a half years in Northern Ireland—small compared with the time that the Minister of State has done there, I know—than being conscious of those appointments outside the Civil Service which were not the concern directly of Ministers—public appointments of one sort or another largely stemming from the changes in local government, and the unquestioned fact that in the past there had been a very considerable measure of discrimination against those of one particular belief or other.
Frankly, if I had had a deep background in Ulster—while absolutely nothing excuses the violence, intimidation and horror of the IRA—I should examine my own conscience with very considerable care to see whether some of the practices of which I had been guilty in


the past had not at least contributed something to the atmosphere and background of the Province today.
The hon. Member for Armagh, feeling that he had a trump card, said, "Why did these trade unionists and these employers suddenly come forward at this time?" As nearly as I can remember his words, he said, "They could have done something about it in the past." But that is precisely the point. So many of those who gave evidence to us said that more was necessary and that greater strength and greater backing were necessary to the decent people, the overwhelming mass there—let us always remember it—of all groups. We sometimes get a view of Northern Ireland from over here that it is totally and entirely peopled by thugs and blackguards. The vast majority are decent working people who mean no harm whatever to their neighbours, but they need the support of the law.
I must concede that over the years—it happened before I chaired this working party—I have become a convert to the principle that there is a place for the law in the matter of equal opportunity and of discrimination. However, I believe that our own experience in Great Britain where race is concerned, and the experience of other countries, some of which is dealt with at least in summary in the Report, shows that it is necessary to have a declaration of public policy which takes the form of the public law. I believe that it gives support for those who have no wish to discriminate but by social circumstances, intimidation and the rest find themselves with no alternative but to do so. I think that it gives protection and redress to minority groups.
Let it be said again, as the Minister of State said so clearly, that "minority groups" in this context does not always mean Catholic minority groups. That is one of the realities of employment in Northern Ireland. Such a declaration can give peaceful and orderly redress for grievances. It discourages, although it does not eliminate—we know that from race relations legislation in Great Britain—behaviour in which prejudice finds expression. It is necessary that, as far as this House can devise it, the machinery to be set up in this Bill, and so on, should be as widely acceptable as we can make it.
To that end I draw the attention of the House to the substantial provisions in the Bill—and here it draws extensively again on the Report—for conciliation. I confess that I had something to do with influencing opinion here because, as a lawyer, like the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson), I have always felt that the principal weakness of our Industrial Relations Act was that it brought the lawyers into play much too quickly.
I shall not talk about that Act now. I should not be in order if I were to do so, and I do not wish to disturb the peaceful waters as they lap towards the Minister of State, but I identify that as what I have always regarded as a particular weakness of the Act, namely, that the lawyers came into play much too quickly. I was always anxious, and I had no difficulty in persuading my colleagues, that in any legislation arising out of the Report, lawyers should not be brought into play too soon.
This is a delicate matter about which men and women feel intensely. This is going to the very root of some of their deepest fears, very often, and prejudices in some cases. I hope, therefore, that the House will notice the many steps which the Agency is being empowered to take. It may seek to secure a settlement, it may obtain written undertakings, and it may thereafter, if those undertakings are not complied with, make further attempts at conciliation. The Agency is being given power to revoke or modify notices that have been served on both parties in the light of subsequent discussions and conciliation procedures, and only finally do we find the matter before the county court, and in my judgment that is as it should be in relationships as delicate as this.
I now propose to say something about the exemptions in Clause 37, with particular reference to the exemption of full employment as a teacher in a school, a matter which the Minister of State reminded us refers only to a teacher in a school. There is far more cross-fertilisation between Catholic and State schools in Northern Ireland in terms of caretaking and things of that kind than one might suppose.
I am as conscious as anyone could be of the potentially divisive nature of the organisation of much of education in


Northern Ireland at the present time, but I believe that the Government are right not to push too fast and too hard at this delicate matter. I notice the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) laughing. Let him remember that there are as many anxieties in what I call "Protestant schools" and among Protestant parents as ever there are among Catholic schools and parents, and it is a mistake to seek to convey to the House by that sort of laughter that the Government are dragging their feet at the behest of the Catholic Church.

Mr. Powell: No.

Mr. van Straubenzee: That is how one can take it. The right hon. Gentleman can make his own speech in his own time. The Government are right to proceed with care.
I remember making a careful examination of the Dutch experience. They seem to provide an admirable example of a people who, albeit under great external pressure, now have a carefully balanced system. Many Dutch people tell me that they brought this about through major changes in their educational system.
Great changes are already taking place in Northern Ireland. It is enormously encouraging, surely, that teachers, for example, in Northern Ireland are in some degree being trained together regardless of the school to which they will go, and that all the authorities are accepting the qualifications of those who come out of the common training progromme.
It is true that there are grave constraints of geography—the hon. Member for Armagh was extremely fair on this matter—in both education and employment. If, by order under the Bill, the Government were to say that any teacher could apply for a teaching post at a school in the heart of the Ardoyne, the reality of the situation is that only Catholic teachers would apply. That does not necessarily mean discrimination on the part of their potential employers. It is the reality of the geographical situation in that part of Belfast, and the same thing could be found in hard areas the other way.
When we move into the industrial and commercial fields, in order to determine whether discrimination has been practised it would hardly be sensible or wise

for the House to set up an Agency which had no regard whatever to that kind of consideration. When we move, as I hope we shall in due course by affirmative Order, to bring sections or groups of school teachers within the ambit of the legislation, it will be right to have that kind of consideration in mind.
The Report was concerned only with the private sector, and that should be made clear, but it had the unfortunate result that when dealing with educational matters we brought within our ambit only voluntary schools, although we had discussions that went wider than that. I had understood that there was widespread agreement with the proposition that one could be exempt from the provisions of a Bill such as this only
where religion is a bona fide professional qualification for the post in question.
However, subsequent discussions by the Government have led them to a different conclusion. For reasons which I have outlined I believe that, in practical terms, their decision is right, but I very much hope that, quietly and carefully, with the aid of this Agency, we shall be able to make some progress in bringing young people together in schools.
In a destructive world—and in Northern Ireland terms we live in a very destructive world—it is surely to be welcomed that here is something constructive. Here is something that has been done in Northern Ireland. Here is something that is the work of both Catholics and Protestants, as well I know. Here is something that has brought trade unions, employers, Chamber of Commerce representatives and public servants together. Here is something which, in an immensely delicate and difficult matter, they have been able to agree.
I have only recently been back to Northern Ireland for the first time since I left in 1974. I was grateful for the opportunity given to me because I was able again to talk to what I hope I may call my old friends in these three bodies to satisfy myself that they were in principle as keen as they ever were that this legislation should proceed. I have it in writing from all of them that all three bodies, quite rightly, have Committee points which they would like us to consider at the right moment.
There is a further consideration which has been brought out before but which


bears repetition. When I left in 1974, as the Minister of State has commented, we had a reasonably rosy economic situation in Northern Ireland. I had feared that my friends on both sides of industry might well say to me "The situation today is so difficult for us and we are so fearful of the future "—and economically they were very anxious—"that this is no time for a Bill of this kind. You should drop it and leave it alone." But I got exactly the counter-argument. That argument was that at a time of recession, that of all times was the time to make the best use possible of the labour force and that one should remove the barriers and inhibitions from the fullest use of the work force.
Having got that constructive argument and having got something which has brought men and women of good will together from both sides of the divide, it comes to this House, and the political representatives, or at any rate the larger number of them, of Northern Ireland, decide, so we hear tonight, that they are going to vote against it. They will go down in history as the political pygmies of Northern Ireland, men who will not recognise and cannot take their opportunities. As a Back Bench Conservative, with no kind of responsibility—[An HON. MEMBER: "Thank God."] The hon. Member may well say "Thank God". I think the Almighty may have had something to do with it. If, when the time comes at the end of this debate, we actually see Members of the Conservative Party—perhaps leading Members of it—voting in favour, and one of the groups of the coalition voting against it, it will show the gulf which has opened up between that group of the UUU and the Tory Party to which they have allegedly some kind of constitutional allegiance.
For my own part, I welcome the Bill. I believe we are right to proceed with it. I very much hope that if a vote is called, those who think like I do will assert their view in the Lobby. I believe that though it can doubtless be improved in Committee, it must be right for Northern Ireland that we proceed with a constructive and hopeful measure like this.

7.43 p.m.

Mr. Tom Litterick: I shall speak briefly and even with apologies as one who has never lived in Northern Ireland and has never been in significant contact with Northern Ireland.
It seems to me difficult to do other than welcome the Bill. On one level it can be seen as a declaration of belief in motherhood, personal hygiene and home baking, and nothing more radical than that. What is lamentable is that it is regarded in some parts of Northern Ireland as a radical measure or, in another sense, as in some way a form of insult to those who dominate Ulster politics.
It is perhaps one of the sadder features of the twentieth century that we have discovered in our institutions and in our societies here and everywhere, particularly in the developed world, a capacity to be hideously unfair to our fellow men on a number of spurious bases. We discovered that it was necessary to tell ourselves that it was not nice to discriminate against human beings because their skins were not white. It was scandalous that we had to tell ourselves this. It was perhaps even more frightening that many people were scandalised to be told that it was not nice to discriminate against people because their skins were not white.
By the same token, it is not nice to discriminate against people because of their religious commitments. I notice that Opposition Members do not disagree with that principle. Bearing in mind that the Bill is a really modest little affair, I suggest that they are doing themselves a great deal of damage by being seen to oppose what is, as has already been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson), a declaratory piece of legislation. It is not designed to have ferocious teeth to compel people to abandon their prejudices by force, by mobilising the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and police and the court system against them. At the very most, somebody may get his wrists slapped if he does not behave according to the rules. Clearly, what the Government intend is that people shall be held up to public view in order to invite public disapproval if they are seen and are proved to have been discriminating against people in the matter of employment purely and


simply on the basis of their religious affiliations.
This seems a wholly unexceptionable piece of legislation. I think it is lamentable that a Member from Ulster should attempt at this late date to convince this House that there is no discrimination in Ulster. That was pathetic. I doubt whether there is a person in the United Kingdom who would believe such a statement. It does the hon. Members cause no good at all to say that there is discrimination, to challenge every factual statement about discrimination with an attempted rebuttal and then to question whoever makes such a statement as being dishonest or informed by hideously motivated people. It does not serve the interests of the people of Ulster in any way to do this.
The principle is one which would surely receive universal acceptance everywhere in the world, although we have all noticed the great difficulties which people encounter when they attempt to apply those principles. It involves us in thinking about ourselves as individuals in our relationships to other individuals, and how we define other people and define ourselves in relation to other people.
I spent my earliest years in a divided community in the West of Scotland, where young people learned at a very tender age to hate other young people on the basis, as it happened, of their religious character or supposed religious character. I am very familiar with that kind of psychology. It took me many years to shake it off. It is a force in one's upbringing which deforms the mind and makes it impossible to think rationally about one's relationship with the rest of humanity. It obliges one to cart that piece of intellectual—if it can be graced with that term—luggage which gets in the way of civilised relationships with other people.
However, mercifully, I was obliged with my parents to emigrate from that wretched environment many years ago and I have, I hope, recovered from the virus of sectarian infection. But, as one who has had it, I am in a reasonably good position to look at it with some authority. As people—I mean this with respect; I do not wish to provoke anybody—who have lived nowhere else, and this is the truth of most of the Members from Ulster, they have greater difficulty in seeing this. They have been immersed

in it all their lives. I sympathise with them truly, but I think they should allow other Members the possibility of seeing an aspect of the truth of Ulster which they themselves are unable to see clearly.

Mr. Kilfedder: The hon. Gentleman is saying that Ulster Members are perhaps provincial. For many years I gave free legal advice at an advice centre here in London. In fact, the same advice centre was attended by the present Solicitor-General. There I saw terrible cases of what are termed working-class people being oppressed, of coloured people being oppressed. Within a few miles of this House there are coloured people who are prevented from getting jobs. Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that we ought to have this legislation extended to all of Great Britain so that those coloured people get jobs? Would the trade unions support him?

Mr. Litterick: I am a little puzzled by that intervention. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that I would not dream at any time of using so condescending a word as "provincial" in this context. What is more, we already have on the statute book legislation which, we hope at least, will help to deal with that problem.

Mr. Kilfedder: In fact, it does not There are many whom it does not help

Mr. Litterick: It may not deal with the problem in practice, but we are trying. That is why I give my support to the present Bill, and I thought that I was doing it in a modest way since it is only a modest measure. It will not change everything. It is simply a bit of public pressure from our legislative assembly, hoping to persuade people of the truth of the principle that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation, and offering a little encouragement to those in society who would actively work to dispel discrimination of that sort.
The Bill is needed. It is, as I say, a matter for sadness that such legislation and such encouragement is needed in certain parts of this country where only a minority of the population would have the courage to stand up and say that it is wrong to discriminate on that basis. But the Bill offers them a form of support, however mild.
I can understand why the Government thought better—if they ever had the first


thought—of using the Bill within the education system, and here I am very much in agreement, I think, with what was said by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee). Given my own background, I am all too familiar with the fact that one gets infected with this hideous rubbish at a very early age. One goes to a Protestant school or to a Catholic school. I vividly remember that one of our fringe activities was to go down the road and knock hell out of the kids in the Catholic school, or they would come up the road and do battle with us. It was the way in which we defined enmity, so to say—how we defined our enemies—and, of course, we learned all sorts of other anti-social things as well.
Whatever may be said about the habits of a community, the fact of life is that in certain parts of the country people are separated as children. They learn it without anyone actually saying it to them, but they are told that they are different and they therefore ought to go a cerain school and be taught only by one sort of teacher. The other schools may be good schools, the teachers may be well trained and the children may never have it pointed out to them during their 10 years at school that they ought to despise those of the other denomination. But that makes no difference. The fact is that one is declared to be different by being put in a different kind of school, and that is reinforced by the nature and habits of the community.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I know that the hon. Gentleman does not wish to mislead the House in any way, and we must have this absolutely clear. There are no Protestant schools in Northern Ireland. There is the State system of education and a Roman Catholic system of education. I go along with the hon. Gentleman in saying that I should like to see integrated education under the State system.

Mr. Litterick: I am grateful for that intervention. I hope that I had not said anything factually wrong. I simply know that there are two sets of schools—as, indeed, there are in this country, one might almost say. But the facts of different institutions existing in the same place have the effect of defining in children's minds the fact of difference.
As we know, children find their own rationalisations of that difference. It is essential to the child that, having had established in his mind that he is different, he must establish also in his mind, for his own benefit that he is better, and he will seek to prove it. For children, there is a simply way of proving that one is better—to go and knock hell out of the other guy, and the more he does that the more likely he is to arrive at adolescence with a firm conviction that, if he does not prove he is better by knocking hell out of the other guy, the other guy will knock hell out of him if he does not watch out. And that leads to all the other peculiar and neurotic behaviour of the adult in a sectarian situation. I make no apology for using the word "neurotic" in this circumstance.
I am very familiar with the behaviour of sectarianised communities in the matter of employment. I worked for several years in a community which was divided in approximately the same proportions as Northern Ireland appears now to be divided along sectarian lines. There were no rules, there was no external committee to tell me how many "Prods" and how many Catholics I should employ. But, by heaven, there were rules all right. If I stepped out of line as the man in that situation who controlled employment, somebody would come to see me. It would either be somebody from within the industrial organisation in which I was employed or it would be somebody from the external community. Their communications system worked extremely well. They knew as much as I did about the sectarian composition of the labour force, and, by heaven, they were not hesitant in seeking to bring their own pressures to bear.
I learned quickly that one had to be seen to be even-handed. Since I was someone involved in neither community, it was a matter of survival for me, since it so happened that the employer was a foreigner, an American, who did not give a damn whether the people who churned out his profits were Catholic or Protestant, so long as the profits were there. All he wanted me to do was to keep his workers quiet, and I discovered that one way to keep them quiet was to make sure that I did not offend their sense of propriety in the matter of who got the jobs and who did not.
That brings me to the question of the use of an external institution, in effect, depriving an employer of his freedom in whom to hire. An employer will always discriminate among the people whom he could potentially hire. He ought to if he is a competent and professionally skilled employer. He owes an obligation to the organisation which he is trying to run to do so.
But there are other bases of discrimination. The Bills is not designed to deprive an employer of his freedom to discriminate between a potentially efficient and a potentially inefficient would-be employee. It is designed merely to eliminate from his consideration these other matters which the Bill now says ought to be matters of public consideration, and that in turn will affect the way in which, historically, we have always run industry. Industry has always been run on a unitary basis—on a unitary authoritarian basis, if one cares to put it like that—with the ultimate source of authority in an industrial organisation lying in either the proprietor or the appointed agents of the proprietor.
This Bill, in a small way—there are other pieces of legislation with which we are all familiar—challenges that basic assumption and offers, in my view, good reason for saying to employers "There are certain things which you may no longer do and attempt to justify for your own reasons or in terms of your own advantage. There are certain criteria which must be brought to bear in the public interest".
It seems to me that this raises the question whether the government of industry should continue to be the secret affair which it always has been, or whether it should become a more open and, in a word, more democratic affair. As a democrat, I seek to bring about an extension of democracy beyond the confines of such institutions as this into the places where people work and have their being.
I see the Bill, however modest, as making one short step along that road, and it seems to me that it is a road along which we should all gladly travel.

7.59 p.m.

Mr. Paul Channon: I intervene briefly because I was respon-

sible for setting up the working party and I have, therefore, followed with great interest both its work and the conclusions to which it came. I was present at only very few of the early meetings, and all the credit, if credit it be—and I believe it to be credit—for the results of the working party must go to my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and the working party itself.
For a few months I had responsibilities in Northern Ireland. In contrast to what was said by the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker), I found that there were continual complaints of alleged discrimination from many people in both sections of the community. There were complaints from hon. Members and from many sections of the community. I do not think that the hon. Member for Armagh would deny that.
The overwhelming pressure for the establishment of the working party came from both the trade union movement and the employers' organisations in Northern Ireland. It was not a bright idea foisted upon an unwilling group of people by wicked British intervention. The establishment of the working party was actively pressed on us during our period in office in Northern Ireland by the trade unions and employers' organisations united.
We must all agree that it is a remarkable achievement that the working party should have managed to produce a unanimous Report on such a delicate and difficult problem. Agreement was reached between people from both sides of industry, between people of different political views and different religious persuasions. I believe that prima facie the Report deserves the serious consideration that it is now receiving.
I do not think that anyone in the House, no matter how optimistic he or she may be, believes that the problems of Northern Ireland will be solved merely by the adoption of this measure. We must ask ourselves whether the introduction of this measure, should it become an Act, will make the situation in Northern Ireland better, or whether, as the hon. Member for Armagh suggested, it will make it worse. If the hon. Gentleman is right in his analysis, and if its introduction will make the situation worse, the House should think carefully before deciding whether to give it a Second


Reading. It is often difficult for English Members to judge how much weight to put upon the evidence placed before the House from a Northern Ireland Member. Many English Members do not have the first-hand experience of the hon. Member for Armagh.
It cannot be ignored that in 1972 both the employers and the trade unions wanted the working party to be established. In 1976 the trade unions have repeated to me that the Bill should go forward. The employers also wish it to go forward. I do not think it can be seriously contended that many of those most closely connected with industrial problems in Northern Ireland wish a measure of this sort to be introduced. I still believe that it is right that something along these lines should be introduced.
When a measure such as this is introduced it is easy to pick holes in it. It must have been an extraordinarily difficult Bill to draft. No doubt there are many aspects that will need to be changed in Committee.
I think that the hon. Member for Armagh was right to stress how the industrial situation in Northern Ireland has been remarkably stable under the extra-ordinarily difficult problems that have prevailed over the past few years. It is astonishing how people have managed to put up with the appalling dangers of travelling to work and the other terrible inconveniences and troubles that they have had to face. It is remarkable that production in Northern Ireland has been so little affected and that relations within factories have been so good. The greatest credit goes to managers and trade unions.
As in 1972, a great many people in Northern Ireland still believe that religious discrimination exists. We have to face the evidence that was emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham and what is implicit in paragraph 11 of the Report. To some degree religious discrimination exists as a fact of life in employment in Northern Ireland. I do not think that can be seriously disputed. The question that any Government must ask themselves is whether the situation can possibly be changed. It is pointless for the House to argue about the extent of religious discrimination or about what has taken place in the past.
What happened in the past has happened, and there is no point in our trying to apportion blame or to judge the extent of religious discrimination. As has been pointed out, religious discrimination exists in both sections of the community.
I believe that there were strong pressures in Northern Ireland for action to be taken to try to make a modest start in tackling the problem. The working party was established, and in paragraph 24 some possible attempts to deal with the problem are outlined. Should there have been voluntary arrangements or should we have proceeded to introduce compulsory measures such as those which the Government have decided to bring forward? It must have been an extra-ordinarily difficult decision to make.
It was a remarkable achievement for such a widely divergent working party to come to a unanimous conclusion. The only tentative conclusion which I reached has been endorsed by the working party—namely, that it would have been totally wrong to have any system of quotas. The working party rightly ruled out that possibility. It decided that conciliation should be the keynote in any system that was adopted. It rightly took that as the basis of its Report.
There will be problems in the implementation of this measure as it will not fulfil everything that we should like to see of it. However, in spite of the many difficulties that will arise, there is a necessity for legislation of this sort to be introduced. We have the support of both sides of industry in Northern Ireland. That support has been expressed throughout the years, not merely for a few short months. The House should make the attempt to enact this measure and to give Northern Ireland the opportunity to adopt a system which may go some way towards resolving some of its difficult problems. I shall vote for the Second Reading if there is to be a Division. I very much hope that it will not be necessary for a vote to take place.
I echo what has been said about the work of the civil servants in Northern Ireland. They have had difficult problems to face in the past few years. I and many other people respect the judgment and support given by those who have had to deal with such difficult and delicate matters.
I believe that the Bill should be given a Second Reading not because it provides a panacea for all the problems of discrimination in Northern Ireland but because it is an attempt that must be made. It is an attempt that on balance will do more good than harm. It is an attempt that is widely desired by those most deeply concerned with Northern Ireland's problems. That desire is felt on both sides of industry. On those grounds I hope that the Bill will receive a Second Reading.

8.10 p.m.

Mr. Robert J. Bradford: We on this side of the House, particularly on this Bench, listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson). We were impressed by his analysis of the situation in Northern Ireland but were rather saddened that he did not take a little more time to state that the real problem in Ulster is that there is no attempt to provide us with parity with the rest of the Kingdom in this kind of legislation or that one of the best ways to remove the tendency there to become alarmed at certain movements by the minority in some industries is to integrate us fully into the Kingdom, thereby exposing us, as we should be happy to be exposed, to legislation about discrimination in employment in respect of the whole Kingdom.
Hon. Members should not be alarmed if we do not place too much importance on the comments and analysis submitted by some of the bodies detailed in the Report which gave rise to the Bill. In one of its booklets, before it made any recommendations about discrimination in employment, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions gave a political and historical analysis which included this remarkable statement:
Self-interested politicians can usurp the resources of loyalty which are called for in the face of such threats and can divert the electorate from the policies of peace and social development. If a common enemy does not exist, such politicians find it easy to invent one.
It went on to say that there was
…an obsession with an illusory enemy.
Is there anything illusory about the enemy which has caused such havoc in the constituencies of my hon. Friends the

Members for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson) and Londonderry (Mr. Ross) or which has ravished industry in Northern Ireland? When such a body, purporting to represent grass roots feeling among union members, makes such statements, we should be wise to pause before accepting all that it says about the history of politics or discrimination in Northern Ireland.
If one had decided deliberately to discourage future investment in Northern Ireland and to undermine the present determination of established industries to survive, if one wanted generally to disrupt the Northern Ireland economy, one could do no better than to pass this Bill. It was conceived in a period of confused attitudes in the Northern Ireland Office, a period which gave rise to the 1973 Northern Ireland Constitution (Amendment) Act, which shares some of the basic absurdities of the Bill in terms of preconceived ideas and jaudiced objectives.
It is clear from the propensity of the then Government for getting everything wrong in Northern Ireland that all the wrong questions were asked about discrimination and thus unhelpful answers received. But one hopes that, when we begin to appreciate the serious ramifications of the Bill, the House will seek another means to safeguard the equal opportunities in employment which prevail in Northern Ireland.
I would take this opportunity to answer some of the criticism of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker). He said not that there were not general evidences of discrimination but that systematic discrimination, particularly in the public sector, could not be proved. No doubt he will be able 'o quote his sources, unlike some of those who have taken part in the debate, with a note of authority but without backing up their statements.
The Bill will place employers in an invidious position, in which they cannot win. Any selection means that discriminatory judgments are made. While the Bill seeks to apply itself to unlawful discrimination, in fact discrimination in a perfectly normal assessment of suitability will be open to appeal. We cannot expect an angelic objectivity from pressurised employees contending for a diminishing


number of posts, so we shall find far more discontent and disruption than if straight-forward appointments were made by personnel departments. Whichever way an employer decides to move, he will often be subject to the most protracted and costly pressures to justify his selection.
Although there is no legislation to this effect, the spirit of the Bill already operates, I understand, in the public sector. I should like to give an example of the kind of problem that employers will face, which can be taken from the experience of public sector industry in Northern Ireland. Three people, two of them Protestants and the other a Roman Catholic, applied for the same job. Not without great difficulty, a panel of three interviewers is decided upon. Then there was the interview, after which, obviously, the two unsuccessful applicants for promotion appealed. Then the appellants were interviewed in turn. Then the panel consulted. Then the panel met the appellants to try to avoid a formal appeal. That was followed by the formal appeal, after which there was an interview with the appeal panel. Then the chairman of the appeal panel interviewed the two people concerned. After all that, there is now an an insistence on the case going to arbitration.
I catalogue those meetings and incidents merely to show the great difficulty confronting that personnel officer. It was a case of Hobson's choice: whichever way he turned, he would be challenged and labelled with the dreadful word "discrimination". I say in passing that this job involved an increase of £10 per annum.
I come to the question of cost. The first cost is to the taxpayer. Many of the people involved on the original selection panel and those involved on the panel of appeal were in the £6,000-a-year-plus bracket. Bearing in mind all of the time involved in this protracted business of appeal and selection and so on, we can easily assess what kind of costs will mount up if this Bill is passed. We can imagine the elborate perpheral activities of this Agency if it ever gets off the ground—the conferences which it will arrange and conduct, the necessary and expedient research, the disseminating of information. Are we being told that all of this will not increase the pressure on the taxpayer? I doubt whether that will be the case.
Let me deal with the cost to the employer. An employer is anxious to keep the system in motion. He wishes to make a new appointment as quickly as possible. More often than not there will be this protracted and costly system of appeal which will mean that the employer will not be able to make the necessary appointments which will help his organisation retain the degree of necessary efficiency upon which his profits are built.
The Bill will be costly to the employer and also to the employee. Clause 3(2) speaks of "due allowance" being made when considering people for an appointment. What if the "due allowance" was the availability of money or was purported to be such? It is not impossible for one person to receive an appointment in a salaried position because he is prepared to accept less money than another worker. Within this Bill there is the awful prospect of setting worker against worker.
Clause 11 deals with the question of the availability of labour and skills. These considerations are enough in themselves to impose a legitimate discriminatory process without resorting to religious or political affiliations. Within certain industries there will be a preponderance of one section of the community. This is because it is a traditional trend. It has nothing to do with inequality of opportunity. It has everything to do with personal choice, albeit a personal choice influenced by the abundance or lack of wealth in a home, a choice influenced by encouragement to pursue further education and training or the lack of such encouragement.
Are we to understand that the Government want to condition either section of the community to feel that it is being discriminated against unless it has adequate representation in every major industry or trade in Northern Ireland? If so, they should be honest enough to state that. They should not campaign under the banner of human rights and freedom, because their objective is entirely the opposite. It is to condition, to limit, to control, so as to slake some kind of thirst for a distorted notion of morality.
Clause 16 contains the alarming phrase "political opinion." There must not be discrimination because of political opinion. It is correct to say that the


level of violence in Northern Ireland—and sometimes we are led to believe that it is an acceptable level—inhibits the development of industry and the Northern Ireland economy. It is said that people will not wish to expand if violence cannot be curbed and eradicated. Can anyone think of a more absurd possibility than that an industry or firm should be told "You must employ people of a particular political persuasion" when members of that political persuasion are to be seen on television or heard on radio saying that more factories will be destroyed, more people will be killed, that there will be more destruction if there is no concession by the British Government?
What kind of reaction would we expect if Maire Drumm or Seamus Loughran were to apply for positions in a fertiliser factory or an explosives factory? If they were the only two people applying for the job and there was a preponderance of the majority community, the employer would have an impossible task. Yet we are to place such people, such firms, who have contributed so much to the economy of Northern Ireland, in that invidious position because of an indecent haste to push through ill-formed legislation. I ask the House to think long and carefully before giving consent to the further progress of this Bill.

8.27 p.m.

Mr. James Kilfedder: The Title of this Bill is simple. Its contents are not. I wholeheartedly endorse the first part of the Title which speaks of:
promoting equality of opportunity in employment and occupations in Northern Ireland between people of different religious beliefs".
That is certainly a worthy goal. I do not think any hon. Member should accuse me or any other hon. Member who represents the majority in Northern Ireland in this House of wishing to do otherwise.
We want to see an end to discrimination. Such an intention would be included in any Bill of Rights which was outlined in the UUUC manifesto and by means of which an aggrieved person could seek his or her remedy in the courts or else seek a remedy through

the enlarged powers of the Ombudsman. However, the bill goes further than that and endorses the charge against the people of Northern Ireland of wholesale discrimination. The hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) made the same charge, although eventually he quoted what the Report said, that discrimination exists to some degree in Northern Ireland. Only "some degree". No one would dispute that. But there is a greater degree of good will between people of different religions in the Province than is realised by hon. Members.
The Bill has grave defects and it is likely to worsen relations between workers in Northern Ireland. I say to the hon. Member for Wokingham that the Members who represent Northern Ireland constituencies fight for what is termed in the House and in Great Britain as the working class. If there is a distinction between ourselves and the Conservative Party, it is that. We seek social justice for all people, and we shall continue to do so, despite the admonitions of the hon. Member.
The Industrial Relations Act, passed by this House, contained grave defects. I am afraid that this Bill repeats the same mistakes. Hon. Members who support the Bill imply that they would support anything to help people in the United Kingdom. Yet I have heard no hon. Member opposite pledge himself to introduce legislation to get rid of the terrible handicaps imposed on coloured people in this City and in other cities throughout Great Britain which prevent them from getting a job and a reasonable home. Hon. Members opposite speak loudly about conditions in Northern Ireland but turn a blind eye to the rampant discrimination which exists in this part of the United Kingdom.
This will not be the first time that this House has enacted legislation which contains grave defects. A curiosity of legislation for Ireland which has emanated from this House over the years, indeed over the centuries, is that, although the expression "religious beliefs" is often used, it has never been defined; and it is certainly not defined in this Bill. Plainly the Civil Service, which is responsible for administering much of this legislation, must have a fairly satisfactory working definition.
Those of us who took part in the debates on the Northern Ireland Constitution Bill in 1973 know something of the difficulty. That Bill re-enacted in a modified form Sections 5 and 8 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Section 5 debarred the enactment of legislation which favoured any religion. Section 8 debarred administrative action which favoured any religion. It is under these provisions in the 1973 Act that a university scholarship cannot be awarded to a student who proposes to follow a divinity course with a denominational content. Because of those provisions, public money cannot be given to a youth club or community association whose rules of membership or aims would tend to advance the cause of a particular religion.
Those very useful provisions were discarded by the Republic of Eire with social and educational consequences which are obvious to people with experience of that country. However, Northern Ireland never abandoned these important provisions, and that should be recognised by hon. Members opposite. As a result, no enactment of the former Stormont Parliament mentioned religious beliefs and only the Education Acts of 1923 and 1947 ever mentioned a particular denomination. We had to wait for direct rule before legislation and administrative decisions began consciously and deliberately to take account of religion and religious beliefs.
The Bill makes provision for a Fair Employment Agency. We have been assured by the Government spokesman in another place that it will be composed of intelligent men and women and that it will always act sensibly. I wish that I could share the Government's confidence that it will act sensibly, but I do not.
The method by which people are chosen to be members of so-called independent bodies, such as the proposed Agency, makes for an interesting study. If there is any defence for the method used in compiling the list, it can be found only in the science of psychiatry. The hundreds of names suggested by Ministers, civil servants, employers and trade union officials—people they have met, played golf with or had a drink with—are all on a computer at Stormont. All the usual details are on the record—age, sex, marital status, education, known interests and hobbies. The most import-

ant detail in the eyes of those responsible for compiling this list is religion. Every man and woman has the letters "RC" for Roman Catholic or "P" for Protestant inscribed opposite the surname. Agnostics are not left out. They have the letters "AP" or "ARC" acording to whether they are agnostic Protestants or agnostic Roman Catholics!
The members of the Agency will be chosen by computer—not at random or by judgment and therefore fairly—but on the basis of religious persuasion.
The Bill expressly excludes teachers. The Minister of State said there were too many difficulties about including them, though he promised that we could discuss the matter in Committee. Even if we discuss it, I think we shall not get teachers included, and this is to be regretted. Where the Bill might have done some good, it has run away from the problem.
The education system in Northern Ireland up to grammar school level is sectarian. The law provides for controlled schools, which are non-denominational, and for voluntary maintained schools, which are largely Roman Catholic.
Hon. Members may not realise that the writ of the Ombudsman does not include complaints from teachers and other staff or applicants for jobs in voluntary schools. They have to suffer indignities in private. They have no right of redress by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Complaints. Teachers and other staff in the State, or controlled, schools have this right. These are schools largely attended by Protestants.
It should be recognised that we in Northern Ireland want to end religious discrimination in education. That is the measure the Government should be putting forward proudly, rather than this paltry Bill with its high-falutin' title. If we end religious discrimination, so that young boys and girls of different religions can go to school together and get to know each other and grow up together, that will bring discrimination to an end.
Experience with the various local government staff commissions, set up a few years ago to supervise fair employment procedures in the public sector, does not inspire confidence in the future of the Agency. Elaborate or time-consuming procedures now exist everywhere in the public sector in Northern Ireland. The


aim of ensuring fairness of treatment is good, but the cost in man-hours and administrative expense is astronomic. At the end of the day it is doubtful whether the aim is achieved. Of the 19 clerical appointments made by the Western Education Board in December 1975, only three were Protestants. Yet the procedure no doubt was followed carefully.
I am not saying that the Bill is unnecessary. I am saying that it is inadequate. It is not the way to tackle discrimination. The Agency will create discord where there is none at the moment, and where it seeks to enforce its views by legal sanction it will introduce industrial conflict and run the grave risk of permanently damaging harmonious industrial relations in the Province.
The House knows what followed from the passing of the industrial relations legislation. The actions of the Fair Employment Agency could reproduce in Northern Ireland the same reaction which that legislation produced in Great Britain, with employees in confrontation with employers, and employers puzzled to know what to do for the best for their business—indeed for the survival of their business. The fundamental reasons are the same. The only kind of action which the Agency can take will make criminals of either employees or employers who have done no more than to act in accordance with what they think is in the best interests of their business.
I see no hope of improving the Bill in Committee, except perhaps for deleting Part II which establishes the Fair Employment Agency. All the safeguards could be included in a Bill of Rights. Lord Feather and his colleagues are sitting on a Committee which is considering a Declaration of Human Rights in Northern Ireland. That would be the friendly way to solve the problem.
The real difficulty about the Bill is that the Government have made the mistake of introducing a complicated measure to deal with what they regard as a "very simple subject". I am using the words which were used in another place by the Under-Secretary of State when he introduced the Bill in May 1975. It is not a simple subject. In Committee hon. Members on both sides of the House will realist that the Bill has grave defects and

disadvantages. If I genuinely thought that the Bill would promote equality of opportunity in employment and occupation I would support it, but it will do nothing of the kind. Ordinary, decent men and women will gain nothing from the Fair Employment Agency, which will become the stamping-ground for the professional agitator and the trouble maker. We have handed enough hostages to fortune without creating more.
Few in Northern Ireland were convinced by the arguments of the working party. Do the Government imagine for one moment that the Swatragh Co-operative Society would employ a Protestant even under legal sanction, that the Essex Engineering Company, Tyrone Crystal, Limavady Hosiery or Hughes Bakery would employ a Protestant, except perhaps for the statutory one or two to show that there was no discrimination? Of course not, because to do so would create disharmony among the other employees of those companies, and that would bring the work to a stop. The only certain result of this legislation, if it goes through, is that many small firms will simply not take on extra staff if they are forced to take someone they do not want or who may create by his presence endless troubles in the firm.
For downright silliness, the van Straubenzee Committee would be hard to beat. Its members were isolated in the main from the mainspring of life in Northern Ireland. Nothing better illustrates the absurdity of its discussions than the highflown language in the Declaration of Principle and Intent contained in Schedule 3. It says:
I/We…bearing in mind the vital importance to industry of a fair and equitable society, affirm and declare without reservation by my/our commitment to the principle of full equality in all aspects of employment opportunity, and utterly reject discrimination on the ground of religious belief or political opinion.
It goes on and on in the same sort of language—a strange compound of Cathleen Li Houlihan and the Easter Week declaration of the Republicans.
If this piece of legislation is fastened around the throats of the people of Northern Ireland, we shall endure it as we have endured seven years of bombs and bullets and Government ineptitude.

8.46 p.m.

Mr. John Dunlop: I may be hopelessly out of order in doing so, Mr. Speaker, but I hope that you will allow me to say what a pleasure it is to me to be called for the first time by your good self, and on behalf of my colleagues I wish you a happy tenure of the Chair. [HoN. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]
I was much intrigued by the catalogue of religious descriptions given by my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder). I was irresistibly drawn to a story concerning the famous Shankill Road in Belfast. Some hon. Members on the Front Benches will know what I mean when I say "up the Shankill". A Jew was coming down the Shankill Road one day unaware of the tense situation in Northern Ireland. Halfway down, he was accosted by an enthusiastic fellow who would call himself a Loyalist or Protestant. The Jew received a shove on the shoulder and was asked "Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?" He replied "I am neither—I am a Jew". The other fellow then said "That is all right, but are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?"
Of course, that highlights the situation. To be more serious, however, I have become progressively fed up with these expressions of Protestant and Catholic views, not only in this place but in the news media in Northern Ireland and, indeed, throughout the United Kingdom. Time and again in pronouncements from the Government in connection with Northern Ireland we have heard mentioned in the first sentences the religious beliefs of both perpetrators and victims of various outrages. That is a scandal, and the practice should be abolished both from this House and from the news media.
One always notes, however, that when such outrages occur here, on the mainland, the first thing we are told is "It is the action of the IRA, the enemy of the people. The victims are British people." That is as it should be in Northern Ireland. The victims of these outrages are first and foremost British citizens, and they deserve the protection of the British Government and the British people. I want to see the doing away with the senseless application which

is given to all the pronouncements that we hear and, even more so, those in the Bill.
To illustrate what I mean, I wish to highlight the case of two young boys which has come to my notice. The Bill applies to training establishments set up by the Government throughout Northern Ireland. It is a very laudable action, and there are many of those establishments. The case I have in mind comes under the heading of discrimination by way of victimisation and failure to provide equality of opportunity, to say nothing of subjecting persons to any other detriment. This is a case which I have put before the Minister of State who is in charge of manpower services in Northern Ireland.
The case concerns two young boys from the town of Strabane, which is up on the border of County Donegal. Their names are Bresland and Crawford. They graduated out of the local secondary school. They expressed the desire to attend a training college to learn a craft which would fit them for life and give them jobs when their school time was finished. They were sent to the training centre in the city of Londonderry. There, they were subjected to all kinds of pressure, intimidation and even physical violence. They stuck it as long as they could. One day they came home showing visible evidence of the treatment to which they had been subjected, and their parents decided that they were not going back.
Representations were made to me. I contacted the headmaster of the school. Mr. J. K. Thompson. He said that this was all true and that he was greatly concerned about these two young boys. The upshot was that they had to be sent away to Ballymena in the county of Antrim which necessitated their staying in and paying for digs. The fact that they come from working-class families who are in what might be called the lower income groups makes the case even more serious. Their families were subjected to a great deal of hardship. Formerly the boys went to Londonderry, which is a half-hour bus ride away. Now they have to go away to a strange town and live away from home during the week. This is all because of discrimination, victimisation and detriment applied to them.
I am sure that there will be no element of retrospection about the Bill, but if it


is passed and these two young boys are brought back from Ballymena and sent again to Londonderry will its provisions protect them and ensure that they have a fair chance to train in this Government centre?
We all know the answer, of course. They have not a chance, and no law contained in the Bill will protect them against this kind of discrimination. Once again, it is a matter of geography. They will be in an area which is predominantly Roman Catholic where young boys have been reared in the atmosphere talked about by my hon. Friend the Member for Down, North. They will not have a chance. The Bill is unworkable for that reason. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) that there is no need in Northern Ireland for legislation of this kind. There are provisions in other enactments of Parliament to cover these conditions.
I have a vivid recollection as a small boy of the troubles of the 1920s. My father was an artisan tradesman in Harland and Wolff or, as we called it, the Queen's Island shipyard. During the height of the troubles he, with other workers, had to run the gauntlet in a very bad quarter of East Belfast. Many a night my mother sat in fear and trembling with me, her eldest son, comforting her, never knowing whether my dad would succeed in running the gauntlet of snipers and gunmen. Many a time when he came home safely he recited to us the events of the day. One of the features of those days was that there was sectarian strife in the shipyard. There was intimidation of workers. Physical violence was used. But that does not obtain today.
One of the outstanding features of all types of industry in Northern Ireland is its complete absence of sectarian violence or intimidation of workers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh said, that sort of thing does not exist and, therefore, our industries enjoy a high standard of workmanship and production, a standard which is not equalled on this side of the channel. The Bill is therefore unnecessary, and Clause 2 is particularly irrelevant.
If the two young boys are brought back from Ballymena and sent to Londonderry, will they get the protection they rightly deserve under the Bill? It is said that

school teachers will be excluded from its provisions, but what about other school appointments? Schools need cooks, cleaners and caretakers. Not so long ago there was an advertisement in the Mid-Ulster Mail—a marvellous production—by the North Eastern Education Library Board for the St. Pius XII Secondary School, Magherafelt. I do not need to explain what that school is. I know a man who would make an admirable caretaker for the school and he lives very near to it. He is, however, a loyal member of the local Orange Lodge and a leading drummer in Ballmoghan band. Yet I know what chance Johnny Thornton would have if he applied for the job as caretaker.

Mr. van Straubenzee: Since this splendid man of such admirable virtue is not a teacher, surely his application for the post would come within the terms of the Bill. This point may yet secure the vote of the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Dunlop) in support of the Bill, because under its provisions he might yet live to see this admirable man as caretaker of the school to which he has referred.

Mr. Dunlop: I shall pass no comment on the hon. Member's observations. I have lived in the South Derry area for 30 years, and I know what chance Johnny Thornton would have of getting that job. The Bill should be thrown out, and that applies particularly to Clause 2.
I have been moved in the debate at the sweet accord which has passed between our Back Bench and the Government Front and Back Benches. I wonder whether in the future there will be the same flow of sweet accord with other legislation.

8.59 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Dunlop) has done the debate good—and this was perhaps something which it needed earlier—by enabling us to laugh a little, including laughing at the Bill. But the Bill is no laughing matter really. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) posed, in a fair speech, the real question about the Bill: will it do more harm or more good? It is because my hon. Friends and I are convinced that, in the present context of


Northern Ireland, it will do largely more harm than good that we think it our duty to oppose the Second Reading.
The commencement of the Report which has been so often mentioned, and which is properly associated with the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee), goes back to August 1972. It is significant that it was then that the investigations of his working party were launched. By August 1972 the civil rights phase of the seven-year troubles was very much on the wane: the figures of the gunman and the bomber were already clearly visible, and the screen, or the misconception, of civil rights was largely dissolving. But in 1972—and as my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) pointed out, this was still visible in the 1973 Act—there was a strong disposition both here in Great Britain and to a considerable extent in Northern Ireland itself to suppose that the root cause of the troubles must lie in some kind of failure to agree, a failure to be reconciled, a failure to eliminate prejudice and discrimination between the different sections of the community in Northern Ireland.
That was August 1972, three and a half years ago. It seems very distant now, perhaps never more distant than this very day, when we reassembled under the shadow of what had been happening in Northern Ireland over the weekend.
As was said earlier, the occasion of that ferocious and still continuing attack upon the citizens of a part of this country was what is called the Stagg affair. It was simply because the Government in every respect and at every juncture acted justly and rightly in the case of Frank Stagg that the enemies not just of Northern Ireland but of this country made a dead set against the innocent people of that Province. There is a whole world which separates, poles apart, what is really happening at the moment in Ulster—the real nature of the enemy, the real cause of the trouble—from considerations of agreement between politicians of different points of view, and of discrimination between one section of the community and another.
My hon. Friends and I do not deny the statement, enunciated in lapidary fashion in the hon. Member for Wokingham's Report, that religious discrimina-

tion exists "to some degree as a fact of life in Northern Ireland" today. It would have been very difficult, without turning in a nil report, to say less than that. The Report says "to some degree"—not "to a considerable extent", "to a large extent" or "to a major degree", but "to some degree". Unless that at least was the case, there would have been no point in going on beyond paragraph 11.
Not only do we not dispute that, but we assert that there is far more mistaken belief in the operation of religious discrimination than would qualify for the description "to some degree". There is a very natural atmosphere, which has been intensified by the events of the past seven years, in which discrimination is believed to exist and to be practised where we know perfectly well that it is not. It is common experience to hear, in the same area, the Housing Executive accused by one constituent of discriminating against him because he is a Protestant and by another of discriminating against him because he is a Roman Catholic.
The question is not whether discrimination exists—to some extent in actual fact, but to a much greater extent in a natural but heightened, perhaps sometimes neurotic, imagination—but whether we shall do good or harm by this legislation. Like my hon. Friends, I am convinced that this legislation will intensify both the real and the supposed importance of this problem; that it will focus attention upon discrimination, real or supposed, where attention was not focused previously; and that it will heighten the consciousness of divisions inside the community.
Let us look at how the Bill will work. The first two parts are concerned with the Fair Employment Agency. The Agency is not to be a passive body. It is not just to sit there, in case someone comes along with a complaint to make. Its statutory duty is to go out looking for discrimination, to discover religious affiliations and to find a pattern of discrimination which corresponds to them. Under Clause 1 it has the duty of
working for the elimination of discrimination".
So it is not just passive: it has to go out and find discrimination. It is in business to do that. That is the job with which it is entrusted.
When we look at Clauses 11 and 12 we find how it is told to do it. Let us take Clause 11:
It shall be the duty of the Agency to identify and keep under review patterns and trends of employment in Northern Ireland…for the purposes of considering whether they reveal the existence or absence of equality of opportunity
—which is defined as related to discrimination on grounds of religious belief.
How will the Agency do this? It has got
to identify…patterns…of employment
in relation to religious discrimination. Quite clearly it must ensure that firms and occupations above the minimum exclusion limit report not merely what are their recruitment practices but what pattern of employment they have. Unless this means that there is to be a survey of employment in Northern Ireland in terms of religion, it means nothing and the Agency will not be carrying out its function.
I have no doubt—it has not been disputed—that in many firms, though by no means in all, people will be pretty well aware of those who are Roman Catholic and those who are not Roman Catholic. Probably the expression "not Roman Catholic" is more accurate than "Protestant". Indeed, I often find myself in some embarrassment as an Anglican wondering whether I am a Catholic or a Protestant. Be that as it may, it must be the foundation of the Agency's work to throw a searchlight upon the proportions of those of different religious beliefs who are employed in different undertakings. Having done that, the Agency must consider what those "patterns and trends" portend,
whether they 'reveal'
—once again I am quoting—
the existence or absence of equality of opportunity.
Let me suppose that, having had such a survey carried out—never mind the problem of finding out what men's religious beliefs actually are—the Agency discovers that in a certain undertaking 75 per cent. of the employees are not Roman Catholic and 25 per cent. are. It has to go on from there to deduce whether that reveals
the existence or absence of equality of opportunity".

Does it take into account the tradition of that firm? Does it take into account the area in which the firm is situated? Does it take into account the traditional connection between some employments and the members of one or another religious persuasion? There are 1,001 reasons why the proportion in a particular firm at a particular place might be 75 per cert. to 25 per cent.
I shall not stop with that question. Let us suppose—because this is implicit in the Bill—that somehow—we do not know how—the Agency comes to the conclusion that that firm is guilty of denying its employees equality of opportunity; that that pattern is evidence of the
absence of equality of opportunity".
What will the Agency do then? It has the duty
of promoting equality of opportunity".
So it has a duty to indicate how the situation should be put right. How, then, should it be put right? How will the Agency operate?
On both sides of the House there has been a chorus of hon. Members saying that there is nothing in the Bill about quotas: that is one thing that seems to unite many of the speakers. The right hon. Gentleman said: "Nothing about quotas in the Bill"; and the hon. Member for Workingham would have nothing to do with quotas. But here is the manager of this firm, which is 75 per cent. to 25 per cent. and where the Fair Employment Agency has indicated the
absence of equality of opportunity".
The manager says "What am I to do to put it right? Would it be equality of opportunity if I had 70—30, or 65—35, or 50—50?". What will the Agency do? How will it fix what would be the right proportion, in the absence of discrimination, in that particular firm in that particular area?
The thing becomes ludicrous if it does not mean that quotas have to be fixed. Unless it means enforcing a different ratio from the ratio which the Agency has discovered, it means nothing at all—and yet this is the heart of the Agency's duty.
This is why my hon. Friends and I believe that the very essence of this operation—it cannot help it—will be to stimulate consciousness of religious difference. It will stimulate in the minds of


employees the idea "I never thought of it before, but perhaps there is discrimination here". It will stimulate the desire to show up a firm, to make this a cause of complaint against a firm. In short, it will be the cause of strife, instead of leading to the elimination of it.
Under the Bill, firms and organisations are to be invited to subscribe to the Declaration of Principles and Intent. In a world in which we have "voluntary" incomes policies and "voluntary" agreements for North Sea oil, we find the rather ominous phrase in Clause 6(2):
The Agency shall also use its best endeavours to encourage all employers and all vocational organisations to subscribe to the Declaration.
In other words, when competing for Government contracts, for instance, or when advertising for staff, or in any other public contest, woe betide the firm that has not subscribed to the Declaration of Principle and Intent. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Hear. hear."]
I am not sure what that is directed to; but let us see whether the "Hear, hear" is an enthusiastic acceptance of what has to be said in the Declaration. Here it is:
I…affirm and declare without reservation my…commitment to the principle of full equality in all aspects of employment opportunity
—and then there follows—
and utterly reject discrimination on the around of religious belief or political opinion.
But this Bill, in Clause 16, makes discrimination on the ground of religious belief or political opinion unlawful. I submit that the citizen ought not to be invited, let alone encouraged or covertly obliged, to sign a declaration that he rejects that which Parliament has declared unlawful. It is an intolerable requirement that a person should be threatened with being pilloried if he will not come forward and say that he rejects that which by Act of Parliament is in any case unlawful. I will go so far as to say that no self-respecting law-abiding citizen would, without qualm or shame, be able to sign a declaration of principle and intent that he utterly rejects
discrimination on the ground of religious belief or political opinion.
If there is any practical effect of this, what is it? It is to enable the Agency to confront that man with a statistical situation—there are other means available in

the rest of the Bill to deal with individual discrimination—and say "This has got to be altered, and altered in a particular way". It is that process which is going to cause the disruption, the division, the enhanced consciousness of the sectarian divide, which we believe will be the result of this Bill.
There is one point in that declaration of principle to which I drew attention in an intervention in the speech of the Minister of State, that whereas employment opportunity is defined in the Bill only in the religious context, and discrimination is defined in the context of religious belief or political opinion, the Declaration of Principle covers both, though it purports to be dealing only with employment opportunity.
Political opinion is a very ticklish business. It is to be unlawful, says the Bill, to discriminate between two applicants for employment on grounds of political opinion. Can this be meant seriously, or can anyone who put this forward have considered what it means? The Secretary of State, in the course of organising the cease-fire arrangements, discovered that there was a thing called Provisional Sinn Fein. Provisional Sinn Fein was not the IRA; it was a political party; it was perfectly lawful to belong to the Provisional Sinn Fein. So no employer in any circumstances, unless the Secretary of State
for the purpose of safeguarding national security or of protecting public safety or public order
signs a certificate under Clause 42, can discriminate between two applicants for employment on the ground that one of them is a member of Provisional Sinn Fein—that is to say, that one of them adheres to the political wing of a movement which is dedicated to using force, economic disruption and terror of every kind in order to detach Northern Ireland by constraint from the United Kingdom.
I have taken an extreme case, though it is covered, so far as I can understand, by the Bill, unless we are going to amend it in Committee and have a schedule of excepted political parties written in. But, of course, in the circumstances which prevail in Northern Ireland there are many shades of political opinion on which discrimination is not merely inevitable but its absence would be inconceivable. Therefore, quite apart from the operations or the Agency, we are being asked to


write into a Bill something which we know in advance cannot be truthfully or practicably applied but which will provide the basis for a constant series of activities which will highlight discord, which will bring discord where there was no discord before, and which will place pressure upon those who are entirely innocent of any improper desire in the organisation of their employment.
From beginning to end of the debate there has been a question addressed to my hon. Friends and myself: why is it that we, coming from Northern Ireland, intend to vote against the Bill when all the laudable bodies which contributed to the working party presided over by the hon. Member for Wokingham thought the operation perfectly sound and, indeed, were keen to support such a Bill?
There is an obligation to answer that question, and to answer it candidly. The answer is this: one must not underestimate the force of a fashionable fetish. There is today a fetish for attempting to deal by law with all imaginable forms of discrimination. It is a fetish against which everyone grumbles in private, which people ridicule in private, but which they do not dare to oppose in public.
Although people ridicule in private the Sex Discrimination Act which the House passed in the last Session—they are now ridiculing it in the Press—there were only a handful of hon. Members who voted against it, a situation which bears no relationship to the balance between those who thought it nonsense and those who did not. Any legislation against what can be called discrimination has behind it today all the forces of fashion: it is a daunting thing for anyone to say that he does not support legislation which is supposed to deal with this kind of discrimination or that. I should have been astonished if the CBI of Northern Ireland or the trade unions, let alone the Irish Council of Trade Unions, had not merely not gone along with what was proposed but not shown themselves more than willing participants.
However, there comes a time, as the hon. Member for Southend, West said, when those responsible—and we on this Bench have a responsibility shared in this House by very few in its directness—

have to decide whether they will choose not to affront a contemporary fashion, not to denounce, even at the risk of being thought to approve discrimination, a futile and damaging piece of legislation to deal with it, or whether they will stand up and say that in practice the thing will do more harm than good, that it will not reduce discrimination, that it will make such discrimination as there is more harmful and will increase the apprehension of discrimination where it does not exist. We therefore must vote against it and be seen to do so; and that is what we shall do tonight.

9.24 p.m.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: There is rather more than standing room in the Chamber, and I must say that this is legislation of a kind which does not excite frenzied enthusiasm among Conservatives, who are properly sceptical of the beneficial effect of statute law upon human relations.
My hon. Friends and I have listened with respect to the case presented from the Ulster Unionist Benches, summed up by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). We understand the fear of, for example, the hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) that a Fair Employment Agency could worsen relations rather than improve them and could engender new divisions. We understand the belief of the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. Dunlop) that the Bill may do little to remedy the sort of vicious intolerance which he described.
The right hon. Member for Down, South answered the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) in the opposite sense from that of my hon. Friend. The burden of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was that the Bill will magnify the consciousness of the problem. He asserted that it will do more harm than good. Nevertheless, as my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) said, we accept the principle in a Bill which, as was predicted by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West, we may seek to amend in important respects if it arrives in Committee. I pay tribute to the efforts that have already been made to improve the Bill in another place, not-ably by my noble Friends Lord Belstead and Lord Brookeborough.
A Second Reading debate fastens on the principle of a Bill. Surely there is general assent for the principle that in Northern Ireland neither religious beliefs nor political opinion—I stress the word "opinion"—should be used to deny work to men and women. The germ of this legislation was in the old Stormont Parliament. That has not been said by any of the hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies. The Government headed by Mr. Brian Faulkner, which included the present leader of the United Unionist coalition, produced the germ. Nor can we lightly dismiss the experience, diligence and conclusions of my hon. Friends the Members for Southend, West and Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and the working party over which they successively presided.
I do not share the view of the right hon. Member for Down, South that we should dismiss the approval or acquiescence of the main representative bodies of employers and workers—namely, the Northern Ireland Regional Council of the CBI and the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Only the week before last I had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Sleator and others of the CBI at Chamber of Commerce House, Belfast. My hon. Friends the Members for Abingdon and Southend, West and I were among Conservative Members who were glad to see Mr. Binks and Mr. Terry Carlin and a dozen others from the Northern Ireland Committee of the ICTU. The principal purpose of the deputation's visit was to further the "Better Life for All" campaign. I seize this opportunity of saying that we endorse the purposes of that campaign. Indeed, many of my hon. Friends are among those who have signed the relevant Early-Day Motion.
We also discussed the Bill with CBI representatives in Belfast. Both the CBI and the trade unions have reservations although they support the Bill. That does not necessarily mean that they speak for everyone in both sections of industry. The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford) put it higher than that. He suggested that they did not speak for anyone in industry. But whether they do or do not, the House should pay tribute to the employers and the working people of Ulster. We should acclaim all those in Ulster in industry and commerce

who throughout these terrible years have stood for peace and productivity amid terror and torment.
The hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker), who speaks with experience as a personnel manager, drew attention to the fine industrial record of Ulster in spite of violence, intimidation and all the dangers and difficulties of getting to work and getting home again. Surely that is a tremendous example of a courageous response to a devilish challenge.
I am myself enough of an Ulsterman to think that the way in which we differentiate in legislation between different parts of the United Kingdom is invidious. The discrimination which is the subject of the Bill is scarcely a major problem now in Great Britain, although my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor), in an intervention, told us that such discrimination is not unknown on this side of the Irish Sea. But it is still a problem in Northern Ireland, the product of history—to some extent, a history encrusted with myth. The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson) gave the example of Harland and Wolff and talked of his boyhood experience in Belfast. But things have changed in County Fermanagh to which he also referred and in Northern Ireland as a whole since 1969.
The Minister of State said that grievances were felt by both sides in the community. I remember the surprise of an English Catholic of my acquaintance who, five or more years ago, took over an Ulster factory with a largely Roman Catholic work force. He wanted to fill two vacancies and was about to appoint two Protestants, whereupon he was informed by the shop stewards that if he did there would be trouble. They had their way. That is an example of discrimination the other way from that which is usually cited in this House and it may come as a surprise to some hon. Members—probably to those who are not here this evening—but not to hon. Members with Northern Ireland constituents or those familiar with conditions in the Province.
That prompts the observation that, as the Bill stands, discrimination by employees, or groups of employees, unlike discrimination by employers, will remain within the law. Thus, there is no need


for the workers of Harland and Wolff, I suppose, to refrain from discrimination when electing directors to the board. There was no mention of discriminatory customs and practices in the Department of Manpower Services' discussion paper on worker participation in the firm.
The hon. Member for Armagh urged us not to exaggerate the extent and harmfulness of discrimination. I shall not rehearse the eloquent counter-arguments of my hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham and for Southend, West, the latter of whom commended the initiative of employers and trade unionists.
The working party noted the connection between discrimination on sectarian lines and such factors as "craft and community traditions", custom, convenience, the possession of skills or lack of skills and the concentration of the minority population, whether west of the Bann or in parts of the cities. Those may be stronger factors nowadays than bigotry or bias.
Unfortunately, areas where Catholic and Protestant have been able to live harmoniously together have declined in the troubles and because of the troubles. For this very reason the Housing Executive, for example, sometimes finds it expedient not to employ Catholics and Protestants in certain areas and to remove them from certain areas for their very safety. I shudder to think of a Fair Employment Agency in future drawing up solemn schemes for the bussing of workers. I do not know whether or not that would be welcomed by the employers and employees of Ulsterbus and Citybus.
Whereas the working party was required to report upon the private sector of employment only, the Bill applies to the public sector as well. In the public sector religious affiliations are officially ignored, but it was not always like that. Time was when the Royal Ulster Constabulary reserved places for the minority in almost mathematical proportion. The police no longer ask for or record the religious denomination of their men and women. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, like the Ulster Defence Regiment, is only too eager to recruit Roman Catholics with the qualifications—and the courage—needed for them to join.
The present Minister for Foreign Affairs in Dublin, Dr. Garret FitzGerald, wrote an article in the Sunday Independent as long ago as November 1972, when he was Fine Gael's Shadow Finance Minister, in which he spoke in envious terms of the measures taken in Northern Ireland
to secure equality of employment opportunity throughout the public sector without regard to political considerations.
These facts should be remembered and put to the credit of Northern Ireland.
Everyone who has mentioned the matter has expressed pleasure that there is no intention of imposing quotas. The working party set its face against that in the fifth chapter of the Report. The right hon. Member for Down, South had a point when he suggested that affirmative action which had substance might in effect come close to the introduction of a quota or an attempt to do so. There is still anxiety in the minds of employers' representatives, for example, on this score.
I come to the issue of discrimination on grounds of political opinion. This exicted almost fierce debate in another place. The Bill provides for considerations of national security. It seems that whereas trouble-making would be grounds for dismissal—this was made clear in another place—known membership of, say, the political wing of an illegal or terrorist organisation would not be grounds for refusing employment. The Under-Secretary of State made it clear in another place that those released from prison after conviction, not excluding terrorist offenders,
must be treated as ordinary citizens"—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17th June 1975; Vol. 361, c. 814.]
That sounds fine amid the red Benches up the Palace yonder. Perhaps it does not sound quite so fine in Ulster.
Lord Donaldson said that the test would be whether, on coming out of gaol, such people associated with men of violence. I suspect that as things are, unfortunately, irrespective of whether they associate with the men of violence, the men of violence would be more than likely to associate with them—unless they emigrated or unless law and order was fully restored.
I may be wrong, but Clause 33 of the Bill seems to bear the interpretation that employers might be adjudged to have discriminated in taking on employees if they had not incurred the expense of advertising in, say, both the News Letter and the Irish News. This seems hard. In the present security situation an employer might reasonably not wish to subsidise the propagation of views sympathetic to the republican movement. I hope that the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) will not mind my saying that I would not particularly want to take advertising space in the Protestant Telegraph, although I think that the Protestant Telegraph would not need my mite anyway.
I refer to the First Report of the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights set up by the Conservative Administration. Might I, in passing, express the hope that Lord Feather is enjoying better health. The Commission agrees with the working party but emphasizes
the importance of recognising those sections which point the way through education, research and conciliation".
There is much to be said for the proposal of a guide to manpower policy and practice. The idea is reminiscent of the Code of Industrial Practice brought in under a Conservative Government. In the preparation of such a guide full consultation is essential.
The Commission holds the view that
wherever possible, required changes should be brought about by agreement rather than by legal sanctions.
For
legislation can only be effective when it is supported by the great majority; only when people believe that discrimination is unjustifiable will discrimination be ended.
Those are wise words, and the Government would do well to weigh them as they take account of the views which have been advanced in this informed debate.

9.40 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. John Concannon): It would be remiss of me if I did not start by thanking the hon. Members for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and Southend, West (Mr. Channon) for the Report. They pointed out that they were the only Englishmen to serve on the Committee. It was basically a Committee of

Northern Ireland people which discussed Northern Ireland problems.
Two Northern Ireland Members tried to belittle the Report by picking out certain bodies or persons who had submitted evidence to the Committee. I wondered why they did not mention the British Institute of Management, the Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland, the Church of Ireland, the Churches' Industrial Council, the Northen Ireland Community Relations Commission, the Industrial Society, the Institute of Personnel Management, the Methodist Church in Northern Ireland, the National Federation of Business and Pofessional Women's Clubs of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Loyal Orange Institution of Ireland: County Grand Lodge of Belfast.
This has been a strange debate in some ways, with the two main parties in the House being opposed by the UUUC. That in itself shows that those of us who go to Northern Ireland, some as Ministers, accept what seemingly Members of that party do not wish to accept, namely, that there is discrimination.

Mr. Molyneaux: Does the hon. Gentleman concede that exactly the same situation occurred in 1972 during the passage of the measure abolishing Stormont and subsequently in 1973 when some of us who represent Northern Ireland constituencies, together with a few hon. Friends in this House, voted against what we said was a nonsense policy which was afterwards proved to be a nonsense policy? We are being consistent in opposing nonsense tonight.

Mr. Concannon: I would not say that the hon. Gentleman had been proved right, but that has nothing to do with this Bill.
The purpose of the Bill is to promote equality of opportunity in employment and occupations in Northern Ireland between persons of differing religious beliefs and to work for the elimination of discrimination, which is made unlawful by the Bill. The principal objective of the Bill is essentially a moral one—that of ensuring that a person's opportunity to obtain employment and its benefit is determined not by reference to the section of the Northern Ireland community from which he or she comes but


according to his or her merits. The Bill should help to resolve some of the widespread feelings of grievance based on the sense of injustice which contributes to the divisions of Northern Ireland society. The Report proves that.
The hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) referred to the question of religious and political attitudes and asked what was the definition of "equality of opportunity". The Bill is concerned with religious discrimination. Part III makes discrimination on the grounds of religious belief unlawful. However, because of the connection in Northern Ireland between political and religious beliefs, the Bill must also cover political discrimination otherwise a person could say that he was discriminating only on political grounds when he was in fact practising religious discrimination. The Bill provides that it is no defence to religious inequality to say that discrimination is on political grounds.
The question of religious affiliation ran through many speeches in the debate. Those of us who have been in Northern Ireland know that there are many ways of asserting a person's religion and that the direct question is likely to be unnecessary. Even if the direct approach is chosen, the Bill provides that a person cannot be compelled to give any information or produce any document which discloses, or through which there can be deduced, religious belief. The working party acknowledges this disinclination about giving information on religious beliefs and says:
it is often unconvincing for an employer or Trade Union to claim not to know fairly accurately which employer, applicant or member is a Protestant and which is a Roman Catholic. The suspicion often lingers that these facts were known and influenced decisions. Indeed professed ignorance of religious denominations might on occasions be a cover for discriminatory practices.
If the Agency is to be successful in promoting equality of opportunity, it must have the powers to investigate the composition of work forces and, subject to the safeguard of the individual's right to withhold the information, to examine its religious composition.
The hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker), in a rather strange speech, carried on the demolition job he started

in a Committee upstairs. He seems to be doing very well on demolition jobs. He does not give us many constructive jobs. Hon. Members from all political parties in Northern Ireland queue to see me with complaints about various acts of discrimination which are alleged to have occurred in Northern Ireland. I sometimes wonder what the hon. Members in the UUUC are complaining about in this House. They say they do not accept the principle of the Report.

Mr. McCusker: We said we support the objectives of the Bill. We would favour providing for individual complaints of discrimination by making access to the courts easier or by developing the structure of the Ombudsman.

Mr. Concannon: I thought the hon. Member said he was against the principle. If not, I have misjudged him. A Second Reading debate is only about principle and I can see no reason why he should not come into the Lobby with us and vote for the principle and then try to amend the Bill in Committee.
The hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) and others referred to the Ombudsman. By definition and tradition, an Ombudsman is created to investigate complaints only in the public sector. He may not initiate investigations himself. He is not empowered to investigate general patterns or practices in employment which may have discriminatory effects. He may act only on a complaint from an individual. As discrimination is such a sensitive matter, it is to be expected that many people would feel reluctant to bring forward a complaint even though they may have suffered from discrimination.

Mr. Kilfedder: I was agreeing that the Ombudsman's powers were restricted and arguing that the Government should enlarge those powers so that people would have a greater opportunity to get their grievances rectified.

Mr. Concannon: The hon. Gentleman should now be able to vote for the Bill. The limitations placed on the Ombudsman may have resulted in only one case of discrimination being found by him, but there are clear indications of discrimination. The Government have received many complaints, and an almost endless number of complaints come to


the Department. There is widespread belief that discrimination is practised to a significant extent. The feeling of grievance generated by such people, mistaken or not, has damaging consequences for the community as a whole. It is, therefore, very much in the public interest that the facts should be established.

Mr. McNamara: My hon. Friend spoke of the weaknesses in the Ombudsman procedure which many people have criticised. Will the Government amend that legislation to enable the Ombudsman to look at patterns of discrimination?

Mr. Concannon: That is another matter. I can say nothing about that tonight. If the Agency, like the Ombudsman, finds that there are few cases of discrimination in the public sector and in the private sector, the Agency, which the legislation creates, will have served the community well by nailing the belief that discrimination exists. It is the existence of that belief that is so damaging.
Running through most of the speeches was concern about why teachers have been left out of the Bill. The schools covered by the provisions are those which provided primary and secondary education, including grant-aided and independent schools. Only teachers are excepted by the provisions. Persons employed in other capacities, such as groundsmen, cleaners, bursars and caretakers, are not.
Northern Ireland has a dual system of education involving State controlled and voluntary schools. Controlled schools are the responsibility of the area education and library boards. The staff in such schools are employed by the boards. They are appointed from persons selected by school management committees. Those committees contain a strong representation of Protestant Churches as transferors of former Church schools to State control. Voluntary schools are independently managed. Managers appoint and employ staff. Most voluntary schools are run by the Roman Catholic Church. In general terms, the staff of controlled schools are mainly Protestant. At voluntary schools they are mainly Roman Catholic.
The purpose of the Bill is to deal with discrimination in employment, and the

Bill is not the appropriate forum for changing the whole educational structure in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, provision is made in Clause 39 for the Secretary of State to vary or to remove completely the exemption for teachers in schools. The Fair Employment Agency is required by Clause 38 to keep under review the exception of teachers so as to see whether further steps to advance equality of opportunity are needed. To this end the Agency may conduct investigations in to the composition and recruitment of the teaching staff. Furthermore, the Agency may report to the Secretary of State as necessary and, whenever the Secretary of State requires, may make recommendations to further equality of opportunity for the employment of teachers in schools.
Another theme running through the speeches was the justification for legislation against discrimination. The Report considered such criticism in detail in paragraphs 9 to 11, 32 and 33. On this we may be running up against the view expressed by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) on legislation against discrimination. The right hon. Gentleman frequently refers to this theme. Today, he quoted the Sex Discrimination Act. I think he is being hasty in his judgment. That Act serves a useful purpose—the more so as it becomes more extensively used.
The working party recorded that it has found a general acceptance that religious discrimination existed to some degree in employment in Northern Ireland and that where it existed it should be dealt with. It may be argued that legislation is not a suitable method of dealing with religious discrimination as it is not possible to invoke the law in order to alter underlying prejudices and distrust. But that argument is based on a basic misconception of the aims of this legislation, which includes emphasis on conciliation, thus providing support for those who do not wish to discriminate but are fearful of social pressures or worse if they do not, and providing a means for the adjustment of grievances, reducing prejudice and protecting minority groups.
The fact that anti-social actions are the product of underlying attitudes is not an argument for the law not dealing with those actions where necessary to provide


protection for the public. It is as necessary for the public to obtain remedies for actions harmful to the individual and society as a whole which are expressions of religious or intercommunal prejudice as it is for the law to counter the other forms of harmful behaviour with which it deals daily.
The main issue put by some hon. Members in the debate is whether the Bill will do more harm than good. The Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights, which attaches great importance to the Bill, has said that its early implementation is vital, and with implementation goes the fact that under the Bill the people of Northern Ireland will know—and this is a greatly import-

ant aspect—that their religious and political views will not be held against them when applying for work.

There is a great sectarian divide in Northern Ireland, and only a few will deny it. The problem must be dealt with in the interests of social justice and human dignity. A vote against Second Reading tonight will be seen throughout the country as a vote for discrimination. I hope that the House will vote for Second Reading overwhelmingly to show that we do not stand for discrimination in religious matters.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—

The House divided: Ayes 156, Noes 8.

Division No. 64.]
AYES
[10.0 p m.


Allaun, Frank
Golding, John
Parker, John


Archer, Peter
Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)
Parkinson, Cecil


Armstrong, Ernest
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Parry, Robert


Ashton, Joe
Hardy, Peter
Pavitt, Laurie


Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)
Harper, Joseph
Pendry, Tom


Atkinson, Norman
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Penhaligon, David


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Henderson, Douglas
Perry, Ernest


Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)
Hooley, Frank
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Bates, Alf
Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)


Biggs-Davison, John
Hunter, Adam
Richardson, Miss Jo


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)
Rodgers, George (Chorley)


Booth, Albert
John, Brynmor
Rooker, J. W.


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Johnson, James (Hull West)
Roper, John


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Jones, Alec (Rhondda)
Sedgemore, Brian


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Jones, Barry (East Flint)
Short, Rt Hon E. (Newcastle C)


Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)
Kaufman, Gerald
Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)


Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)
Kerr, Russell
Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Lamborn, Harry
Skinner, Dennis


Callaghan, Jim (Middleton &amp; P)
Lamond, James
Small, William


Canavan, Dennis
Latham, Arthur (Paddington)
Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Lawrence, Ivan
Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)


Channon, Paul
Leadbitter, Ted
Snape, Peter


Clark, William (Croydon S)
Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton and Slough)
Spearing, Nigel


Clemitson, Ivor
Loyden, Eddie
Spriggs, Leslie


Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)
Luard, Evan
Stoddart, David


Cohen, Stanley
Lyon, Alexander (York)
Stott, Roger


Coleman, Donald
McCartney, Hugh
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)


Concannon, J. D.
McElhone, Frank
Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)


Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)
MacFarquhar, Roderick
Thorne, Stan (Preston South)


Crouch, David
McGuire, Michael (Ince)
Tinn, James


Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)
McNamara, Kevin
Torney, Tom


Davidson, Arthur
Madden, Max
Urwin, T. W.


Davies, Bryan (Enfield N)
Magee, Bryan
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Deakins, Eric
Mallalieu, J. P. W.
Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.


Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)
Marks, Kenneth
Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)


Dempsey, James
Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)
Wainwright, Richard (Coine V)


Doig, Peter
Mawby, Ray
Walker, Terry (Kingswood)


Dormand, J. D.
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Ward, Michael


Duffy, A. E. P.
Maynard, Miss Joan
Watkins, David


Dunn, James A.
Mellish, Rt Hon Robert
Watkinson, John


Eadie, Alex
Mikardo, Ian
Weatherill, Bernard


Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)
Millan, Bruce
Weetch, Ken


English, Michael
Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)
White, Frank R. (Bury)


Eyre, Reginald
Molloy, William
Whitehead, Phillip


Farr, John
Moyle, Roland
Williams, Alan (Swansea W)


Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.
Mudd, David
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Flannery, Martin
Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King
Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Neave, Airey
Woodall, Alec


Fookes, Miss Jaret[...]
Oakes, Gordon
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Ford, Ben
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley
Young, David (Bolton E)


Forrester, John
Ovenden, John



Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)
Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


George, Bruce
Palmer, Arthur
Mr. A.W. Stallard and




Mr. John Ellis.




NOES


Carson, John
Paisley, Rev Ian
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Dunlop, John
Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch
Mr. Robert Bradford and


Kilfedder, James
Ross, William (Londonderry)
Mr. McCusker.


Molyneaux, James
Winterton, Nicholas

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

NORTHERN IRELAND (TREATMENT OF OFFENDERS)

10.10 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Merlyn Rees): I beg to move,
That the Treatment of Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 20th January, be approved.
I informed the House on 4th November that I would be bringing forward this Order for approval to enable a number of new measures for the treatment of offenders to be introduced in Northern Ireland, and that I proposed to make a start on the phasing out of special category status. The Order was published as a proposal on 19th December 1975 and was laid before Parliament in draft on 20th January 1976.
The new measures, which take account of penal developments in the rest of the United Kingdom, include new release arrangements for prisoners, powers for the courts to order offenders to undertake community service and power to defer sentences for up to six months. Provision is also made to enable hostels to be provided within the community. The measures are consistent with the general trend in penal reform.
By far the most important of these measures is the proposal for new arrangements for the lease of prisoners. Remission of sentence has for long been a feature of the prison systems in all parts of the United Kingdom. Although there are minor differences of practice governing release of prisoners between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, all prisoners serving determinate sentences of more than one month have, for many years, been able to earn remission of one-third of their sentence by good behaviour. On this important matter, a prisoner serving a sentence of imprisonment in one part of the United Kingdom was no better and no worse off than a prisoner serving a similar sentence in another part. Generally the sentences of such prisoners expire on release, and they are under no further liability of any kind.
This position of parity was upset when the Criminal Justice Act 1967

made provision for the establishment of separate but similar parole schemes in Scotland and in England and Wales. These parole schemes did not supersede the existing arrangements under which prisoners could earn one-third remission of sentence but were additional to them. Prisoners serving determinate sentences became eligible for consideration for release after completing 12 months in prison or one-third of their sentence, whichever is the longer period. The parole scheme applies only to persons who are serving sentences of more than 18 months.
The process of selection for release under the parole scheme for England and Wales is elaborate and is described in detail in the Report of the Parole Board for 1973. It involves the collection of comprehensive information about the history of a prisoner prior to his sentence, his behaviour during sentence, his plans for the future and the circumstances into which he will go, if and when released.
Prisoners released on parole are usually subject to supervision by a probation officer and may be required to observe conditions specified in a parole licence until the period of parole expires. Prisoners who fail to comply with the terms of their parole may be recalled to prison.
By no means all prisoners who are eligible for consideration for release on parole benefit from the scheme, and many remain in prison until released on remission of sentence in the ordinary way. None the less, the introduction of parole has given prisoners in England, Scotland and Wales a significant additional opportunity for early release compared with their counterparts in Northern Ireland. This has been acknowledged for some time by successive Governments, and extensive studies have been made to see how the balance might be satisfactorily restored.
Nevertheless, in prevailing circumstances, I am satisfied that it is simply not a practical possibility to introduce a parole scheme in Northern Ireland. With the compound conditions in which the majority of Northern Ireland prisoners are housed, it would not be feasible to make the kind of assessment


of readiness for release which is a feature of the parole scheme. Nor is it realistic to expect probation officers to supervise prisoners on parole who may be motivated by influences which probation officers are neither qualified nor trained to control. It remains clear, however, that many Northern Ireland prisoners would be regarded as very good prospects for parole when judged by the criteria used by the Parole Board.
There are few who would dispute that the parole scheme was a valuable and imaginative advance in penal reform. Nevertheless, the House will know that it has not been free from criticism, and this has encouraged me in my conclusion that the solution to the particular problems which exist in Northern Ireland should be by an approach which is quite different from that which has been taken elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
I should like to pay tribute to the Under-Secretary in my Department who is in another place, whose knowledge in this field is great and who has spent a great deal of time in the last 18 months gathering knowledge about the problems of prisoners in Northern Ireland and has played an important part in this scheme.
Accordingly, I am proposing that prisoners serving determinate sentences will be given an additional remission of one-sixth of their sentence, allowing them to be released at half sentence instead of two-thirds sentence as at present. However, instead of being free of all further liability on release, prisoners so released will, if they are convicted of an imprison-able offence committed during the remitted period of their sentence, be liable to be returned by a court to prison for all or part of the balance of their sentence, in addition to whatever other penalty the court may impose for the offence.
Because of the negligible effect which this would have on persons subject to short sentences and because of the administrative difficulty of keeping track of such sentences, the liability to be returned to prison will not apply to persons serving sentences of one year or less. The scheme will not apply, either, to life sentence prisoners whose cases will continue to be reviewed periodically under existing arrangements. Life sentences are not affected.
I am also proposing to extend in Prison Rules the powers of Prison Governors to

postpone release for breaches of prison discipline by periods of up to one month instead of two weeks as at present, but do not propose to vary the powers of Boards of Visitors to postpone release for periods up to six months for serious breaches of prison discipline.
The powers to return persons to prison are for the court to exercise and there will be no Executive intervention of any kind. As is the wont in Northern Ireland, if elected representatives of any kind wish to make representations about this, it will not be for me to deal with them; it will be a matter for the courts. It will be for the court and judiciary to be contacted, and not my office.
The scheme is simple and readily understandable. The emphasis is on personal responsibility. If a prisoner does not commit an offence under Prison Rules in prison, he will know with certainty when he is to be released. If his release is postponed for a breach of discipline, he will know the reason why. On his release from prison, he will be able to live in the community just like any other citizen, but if he is not prepared to live within the law, he will know that he is liable to be dealt with more severely for subsequent offences. This is a real and important sanction.
It may be argued that the absence of compulsory supervision by a probation officer is a weakness of the scheme. I would be the first to acknowledge the value of the work done by probation officers in helping offenders in the community. I am, however, satisfied that in the present Northern Ireland context, compulsory supervision is inappropriate. The Northern Ireland Probation Service is, however, prepared to provide support for any discharged prisoner who seeks it on a voluntary basis and all prisoners will be encouraged to make use of that service.
Authority for the grant of increased remission from one-third to one half of sentence will be by way of amending Prison Rules, which will be laid before the House shortly. These rules are made under the Prison Act (Northern Ireland) 1953 and are subject to the normal statutory instruments procedure before Parliament. The opportunity is being taken to make a number of miscellaneous minor changes to bring the Rules more closely into line with the rest of the


United Kingdom. I have already mentioned the increase in the disciplinary powers of governors. In addition, the Rules will provide for the prospective forfeiture of remission in the case of remand prisoners, the extension of the terms of office of Boards of Visitors, and the revocation, which I regard as important, of the largely obsolete powers to impose corporal punishment in prisons and borstals.
An increase in remission inevitably produces a backlog of prisoners who will on 1st March have already completed half sentence or more and, in the absence of special provision, would qualify for immediate release under the new rules. To deal with this problem, the Rules include transitional arrangements to enable the backlog of prisoners to be released in accordance with my directions over the four-month period from 1st March to 30th June. The releases will be phased according to sentence categories so that, during March, prisoners serving between one and three years who have completed half sentence will be released; the April releases will comprise prisoners serving between three and five years; the May releases, prisoners serving between five and seven years; and finally, in June, those serving over seven years. Approximately 450 prisoners will be affected by these arrangements.
I turn to the Order itself. Part I, I think, is self-explanatory. As I have said, release from prison with increased remission of sentence will be authorised by amending Prison Rules which will be laid before the House. Part II is complementary to the Rules, and the two together form the statutory framework for the new release arrangements.
Article 3 gives power to the courts to order the return of a person to prison if he is convicted of an imprisonable offence committed during a remitted period of a previous sentence. This power, as I have said, is in addition to whatever penalty the court may apply for the offence itself.
It should be noted that courts may order return for all or part of the balance of the original sentence still outstanding at the date the court makes the order. The power may be exercised more than once and remains available to courts

dealing with imprisonable offences committed and dealt with during the currency of the remitted period of any previous prison sentence. Magistrates' courts can order return to custody only for up to 12 months as this is consistent with their current powers to impose terms of imprisonment, but the case can be referred to a higher court if a longer period for return is available and the lower court is of the opinion that a longer period of return to prison than 12 months may be justified. Articles 4–6 give a right of appeal to a higher court against an order of return to prison made under Article 3, and provide for proof of liability to the provisions of Article 3.
Part III provides for the introduction in Northern Ireland of community service for offenders, deferment of sentence and restriction on the imposition of a first custodial sentence without legal representation, all of which are already available in England and Wales by virtue of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 1973.
As the House will know, following a recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Penal System, community service for offenders was introduced on a trial basis in six probation and after-care areas in England and Wales. The trials have shown the schemes to be viable and they are now to be extended to all parts of England and Wales, subject to the constraint of the present financial restrictions. I am satisfied that community service would also be a valuable method of treatment in Northern Ireland, and accordingly Articles 7–13 provide for this.
Provision is made for courts to order an offender aged 17 or over who is convicted of an offence for which he could be sent to prison to perform not less than 40 or more than 240 hours of unpaid work. The Northern Ireland Probation and After-Care Service will play a major role in the administration and implementation of the scheme and it is hoped to involve as wide a range as possible of voluntary and statutory agencies in the provision of suitable tasks for the benefit of individuals or the community generally.
Article 14 allows a court to defer passing a sentence on an offender for up to six months. This power is to enable the court to have due regard to circumstances which might be uncertain at the time it is dealing with the case but which are


likely to become clearer with the passage of a reasonable period of time.
Article 15 is designed to ensure that a person who is to be given a first custodial sentence has been given every opportunity to have his case adequately presented in court. In practice a very large number of cases in this category are legally represented and the purpose of this provision is to extend the safeguard to all such cases.
Part IV of the Order deals with a number of administrative provisions. Article 16 extends the powers of the Secretary of State in line with those available to Probation and After-Care Committees in England and Wales to provide bail hostels and other facilities for the treatment of offenders in the community.
Schedule I makes transitional arrangements to ensure that liability to be returned to prison under Article 3 will not apply to persons released prior to 1st March 1976. Persons who will already have served more than one half of their sentence and are released initially under the new arrangements will have their liability to recall reduced to take account of this.
The coming into force of this Order is coupled with another important development—the ending of new admissions to special category. Special category status in prisons in Northern Ireland was introduced in 1972 at a time when the security situation in Northern Ireland and the problems faced in Her Majesty's prisons presented a uniquely difficult situation. Hon. Members will already be familiar with its meaning and its effects.
I am absolutely certain that it is right now to start phasing this system out, but I should also make it clear that when we were in opposition we fully supported the introduction of the system by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Whitelaw). In considering the reasons for introducing it, one is bound to recall the circumstances of the time. I must also make clear to the House my own view that the fact that there is no one in detention in Northern Ireland has been a real contribution towards our being able to take the decision we have taken. All those in prison in Northern Ireland are in prison by the due processes of the law. They are not there

by executive action. They are not there by decisions taken uniquely by myself, and it is in that clearer situation that I have felt able to deal with this matter.
The Order will begin to take effect on 1st March and it is the Government's firm intention that no offence committed after that date will qualify the offender for special category status in prison. All these newly convicted prisoners will be housed in cells and will have the benefit of a positive regime of work and training. No method of ending new admissions can be devised that will not produce some apparent anomalies, but the Government are satisfied, taking all factors into account, that this is the correct method.
This is the key to the restoration of control—and loss of control was the most objectionable feature of special category. The aimless existence, followed by special category prisoners in compounds, is no preparation for return to normal living. Henceforward all new prisoners, like existing ordinary prisoners, will be required to work, and I am glad to say that increasingly we are now able to provide work which will make constructive use of the skills of prisoners. While they are working, prisoners will be required to wear prison clothing, and if they want to enjoy the privileges available under prison rules they will have to earn them.
At the same time, the opportunity is being taken to review the administrative arrangements for letters, parcels, visits and leisure clothing for all convicted prisoners, and to introduce some improvements. All of this makes sense. These developments are for the good of the Northern Ireland community and, indeed, of the prisoners themselves, and I am sure that all responsible opinion will support them.
In conclusion, I should like to mention a matter which concerns me greatly. I am responsible for security in Northern Ireland. There have been problems in the prisons in Northern Ireland. I have a list of occasions when the Army was used in prisons, as during the Maze burning the year before last. My hon. Friends who were there will remember how there was, in effect, a battle. The Northern Ireland civil servants responsible for prison matters were involved with the RUC and even more with the Army, which brought soldiers into the prison.
There are rules, of course. Some hon. Members will remember seeing pictures in the newspapers of the weapons that had been fashioned. It was an unpleasant situation. I have never altered the rules. The rules are still exactly the same.
In the past couple of days I was very surprised to hear a story that the rules had been altered. Neither I nor my security advisers have knowledge of any plan in the Maze Prison or anywhere else to make an alteration when special category is ended. We have no knowledge of anything that is going to happen. If anyone has such knowledge he should go to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and not to me. I am not a policeman. It is not my job to carry out the work of the police. I regret that the person who raised the story in the Press has not seen fit to give the information to the RUC. If there is trouble the rules will be as they have been. There has not been one iota of alteration.
I pay tribute to what the Army has done in the time that I have been in Northern Ireland, and before. The development of ending special category, while not part of the Order, will take place when the Order comes into effect. I commend the Order to the House.

10.32 p.m.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: This is an important and complicated Order and the House will be grateful to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who carries a heavy burden which does not get lighter, for explaining it in person. He will be aware that we fully support the ending of special category status. We do not underestimate the magnitude of such a step.
I saw the Maze Prison at the time of the fire to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred. We realise that this is a serious step with which the policy of remissions is linked. It is necessary for more units of cellular accommodation to be furnished so that firmer control can be asserted over prisoners and so that prisoners can be given work.
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that in Great Britain there has been public disquiet and public comment regarding the release of prisoners against whom charges of serious crimes have

been brought. I wonder whether the remission of half sentences will apply to those convicted of the more serious crimes. What exceptions will there be? The people of Northern Ireland will be concerned, as have been people of this side of the Irish Sea, that there are proper safeguards for the safety of life and property.
We have taken note of what the right hon. Gentleman said about sanctions against those who might default after remission. Has the right hon. Gentleman considered whether remissions should apply only to prisoners foregoing special category status? That would provide a positive incentive for prisoners to change willingly and voluntarily, and to cooperate in moving from special category to ordinary criminal status.
We welcome what the right hon. Gentleman said about community service arrangements. Of course, in Great Britain the circumstances are entirely different from the arrangements made in 1973 appear to have been going well.
I wonder what kind of appointments the right hon. Gentleman intends to make to a Community Service Committee. Article 10 refers to people subject to community service orders changing their addresses. What arrangements will there be for the performance of these orders in the areas to which those concerned move? The definition article does not tell us precisely what is meant by "a relevant person" in Article 7(11) and Article 8.
The Order includes provisions for the abolition of corporal punishment in prisons and borstals, in line with what has happened in Great Britain. Is this a case of giving legislative effect to the existing situation? I think I am right in saying that no sentence of corporal punishment has been imposed in Northern Ireland for some time.
I have a certain charitable interest in the reference in the Order to assistance to bodies concerned with prisoners' aid, since I am the honorary adviser to a Catholic prisoners' aid body. I believe that there was a policy change last summer which caused a stir in Northern Ireland. Which organisations receive or will receive public subsidy and under what conditions?

11.37 p.m.

Rev. Ian Paisley: A great problem in Northern Ireland is prison accommodation, how the prisons are run, the conditions inside them and the rules governing those convicted of various offences. We as Ulster representatives welcome every step to bring the prisons of Northern Ireland into line with the prisons of the rest of the United Kingdom. Any step in that direction as envisaged by the Order is welcomed on this Bench.
But let no one think that the prisons and the legal system in Northern Ireland can be compared with the situation on this side of the water. There are terrorist courts there for the trial without a jury of scheduled offences. So people are not sentenced in the same way as they would be here. It is important, when examining prisoners and the courts which deal with scheduled offences and the conditions of those sentenced, to bear those facts in mind. The Secretary of State must admit that an exact parallel cannot be drawn in this respect between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
I know that the Order does not deal in full with the special category status, but the right hon. Gentleman has said that there will be changes. I suppose that we shall have an opportunity later to discuss special category prisoners.
When will the Secretary of State announce the putting into operation of bail hostels? I am sure that he will agree that remand prisoners in Northern Ireland are quite a problem. The situa-in the Crumlin Road Prison for remand prisoners is not one that the right hon. Gentleman or any other hon. Member would like. On behalf of my colleagues I welcome the step forward that is being taken with regard to bail and remand prisoners. If the Secrelary of State could spell out in greater detail what he has in mind it would be helpful.
Under British law a person is innocent until proved guilty. In Northern Ireland we have many remand prisoners who have done a long stretch in circumstances that are almost the same as they would be if they were serving prison sentences. I conduct a service in Crumlin Road Prison every Sunday morning and remand prisoners there tell me that they wish that their trials were over and that

they were serving sentences. This is because of the perplexities created for them and the standard of accommodation available to them. We on these Benches regret that it is not possible to have a proper parole system but I agree with the Secretary of State that such a system would not be practicable. I cannot see how any officer could properly supervise a person on parole in the present serious situation.
I urge the Secretary of State to keep this matter under constant review. If a time came—and we hope it will come more quickly than we expect—when there was a degree of normality, I would like to see the law governing the prisoners in Northern Ireland brought into line with that in any other part of the United Kingdom.
I turn to the question of prison accommodation, which is a serious subject in Northern Ireland. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many prisoners are at present in compounds and how many are in cells? Can he say what the intake of the Northern Ireland prisons has been in the past three months? If the intake is rising, the availability of cells will be less. Will the Secretary of State tell us how the prison building programme is progressing? This question of penal reform and the bringing of the law governing prisoners in Northern Ireland into line with the law in the rest of the United Kingdom rests entirely on the availability of cells—on the availability of proper accommodation.
I do not suppose many hon. Members have visited the compounds in the Maze Prison. If they went there they would see how different the set-up in the Maze is from a prison on this side of the water. They would see that there was a grave distinction between the position of sentenced prisoners and prisoners awaiting trial in Northern Ireland and that of prisoners in any other part of the United Kingdom.
I should like the Secretary of State to give some more information about the intake of prisoners in the past three months and say what he thinks the intake will be after March. If the intake is greater than it is now, the practicality of the system could be put in jeopardy. Perhaps the Secretary of State does not want to look into the future because that is difficult, and I suppose that from a


security point of view he does not want to give a figure in excess of what it might be, nor does he want to make a lower calculation, but this is the crux of the situation.
We have looked at the proposal of the Secretary of State that prisoners who have served half their sentences should be released. Has the right hon. Gentleman made any contact with the prisoners who would benefit from this proposal? Many prisoners would rather serve their full sentence—that is, the two-thirds—and know that when they left prison there would be no possibility of imprisonment being reimposed on them. I understand that in this country not every prisoner gets parole, and probably not every prisoner applies for it and therefore does his two-thirds term and is absolutely clear when he leaves prison.
When the proposed system comes into operation in Northern Ireland, will a prisoner be able to make a choice? Will he be able to say, "I want to do the two-thirds of my sentence", or must he go when he has completed half the sentence? The Secretary of State is smiling, but from my contact with prisoners I know that some of them would prefer to leave prison absolutely clear. The right hon. Gentleman needs to keep that thought in mind, because it brings out an anomaly between the suggested system for Northern Ireland and the system which operates on this side of the water.
On the question of special category status, the House would do well to cast its mind back. Earlier tonight we debated a Bill which originated with the previous Government. It was a baby taken up and weaned by the present Government. Whatever criticisms may be made of the Secretary of State, he cannot be blamed for introducing special category status. It was introduced not to help what are termed Loyalist prisoners but because, it was said, certain IRA men were fasting to death.

The Minister of State, Northern Ire-laud Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): Mostly Protestants.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I agree that Protestants benefited from it. However, it was granted, not to Protestants, but to IRA men who proposed to do in Northern Ireland what Mr. Stagg did on this side

of the water. The then Secretary of State said at the Dispatch Box that special category status was like something which existed in the prisons on this side of the water. Members of the Opposition Front Bench should note that it was a Conservative Secretary of State who tried to tell Northern Ireland representatives that this compared with the status of prisoners on this side of the water. We all knew that that was far from the case.
The vast majority of elected representatives in Northern Ireland at that time opposed the introduction of this status. It is something the IRA has always insisted on—that its members are political prisoners and not criminals. Protestant prisoners also accepted that status, though I was one of those who suggested that they should not adopt it because they were playing into the hands of the IRA.
Does the Secretary of State propose that, where this status has already been granted, it should cease from March? I understand that he does not, so we shall have the special category status in Northern Ireland prisons for a long time. I think it will be years before it can be done away with. Will the status be available to those who commit crimes before March? If a person commits a crime tonight and fulfils the necessary criteria—whatever they are—will he be able to claim special category status? This must be spelled out quite clearly.
We must face facts. Those who are connected with Loyalist para-military groups, as well as those in Republican groups, are totally opposed to the abolition of this status. The House should not delude itself that there will be any welcome from these people.
Through all the troubles, the writ of law has always run in Protestant areas of Northern Ireland. Police have always been able to go in and make arrests. It might have been more difficult at some times than at others, but they have always been able to go in. People have been brought before the courts, sentenced and are now serving their time.
On the other side of the coin, it has been accepted that there have been "no-go" and "no-stay" areas and, in answer to a Question from me in the House, the Secretary of State has admitted that there are now areas where, to say the least, there is not normal policing.

Mr. John Carson: No policing.

Rev. Ian Paisley: My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson) may be more accurate in relation to some areas. But let us give honour to the RUC in the areas in which it does operate.
However, in those areas where the police do not operate, terrorists have, to some extent, a sanctuary. They are harder to detect and apprehend and it is more difficult to get evidence against them. Evidence can be gathered where the police operate. In areas where they do not operate, that task is much more difficult. That leads to the feeling in the Protestant area that if a Protestant commits an act of terror he is more likely to be captured, brought before the courts and sentenced, than is a Republican who commits an act of terror.
When the writ of law was not running in certain areas detention was used. In those days most of the people detained were from areas in which the police could not operate. Therefore, there were far more Republican than Protestant detainees. Now that those detainees have been released many of them have gone back to the sanctuary of their own areas and few have been made amenable to the law. But the Protestants who committed crimes and acts of terror or counter-terror were caught and sentenced. So there is a strong feeling that there has not been even-handed justice and that it has been to the advantage of the Republicans because they were in areas where they had sanctuary from the law.
We should be blinking the facts if we did not bring these matters before the House. There is a feeling in Northern Ireland that those on the Protestant side can be caught and have to do time, whereas those on the Republican side can get away with it.
We on these Benches do not have to make the decision. The Government have to make it, and they have announced their decision. In the past in Northern Ireland the making of laws and the failure to administer those laws led to the breakdown of law and order. There were people in another place who thought that they could ban parades although they were told that they could not. Parades were legally banned, but parades went on, and that brought the law into contempt.
The Secretary of State should bear in mind the serious misgivings we have about the practicality of some of the measures he envisions in the Order. Prison reform and change will not be easy. Anyone who says these changes can easily be made does not know what is before us. There are those on the Protestant side who committed atrocious acts of terror. They have no right to cover over what was really crime, the motivation for which had nothing to do with politics, but there are sincere men who find themselves in a serious position. We need to bear them in mind. We in the House have a responsibility. They are in that position because the Government of the country was not able to give them the protection they were entitled to expect.
It is sad to see such men who have never had a stain on their characters, who were never before a court in their lives, while other men who have been in and out of prison no doubt use the name of loyalty to cover up their practices. There are people who have never had a stain on their characters but who, for the ideal of maintaining Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom and because of a breakdown of law and order, find themselves in prison through no fault of their own except a decision they made, which was a wrong decision, to follow what they felt to be a legitimate course.
I feel for these people because they never had anything on them before. I Meet and talk to them, and I know how they feel. The Secretary of State makes the decisions. We on this Bench have no responsibility for the decisions he makes. We can try to convey to him how our people feel, but his are the decisions.
From this Bench he has received and will receive strong criticism and resistance, but we must put on record that he had nothing to do with the introduction of special category status, which was introduced in a way which helped forward the IRA. If the same policy had been pursued against the Republican hunger strikers in Northern Ireland as was taken against Mr. Stagg, things would have been different in Northern Ireland.
We welcome parts of the Order. I trust that it will help to ease the burden. We shall listen with great interest to what the right hon. Gentleman has to say


about implementation of many of the things about which we have asked.

11.3 p.m.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I shall answer as many of the points raised in the debate as I can. If I miss any, I will write to the hon. Member concerned.
I say to the hon. Member for Antrim. North (Rev. Ian Paisley) that I have often given thought to the sincerity of those who murder and kill in Northern Ireland. Their actions may have been done to bring about a united Ireland or to keep Northern Ireland's link with the United Kingdom. Like him, I am moved by what has happened, and there are times when, unlike him perhaps, I feel a personal responsibility, and when my right hon. Friend the Minister of State returned from Armagh and described to me those people in the factory who had been mown down by the IRA, I do not think I have ever seen him more moved.
Perhaps the men who did it were sincere—but sincerity does not justify what is done in Northern Ireland. It is the easy way out. As I left Northern Ireland this morning, I read that three people had been killed. The Press reports said that it seems to have been done in this instance by Protestants—though that is probably a misuse of the term. I have no reason to know either way. The details were bloody. Sincerity is no justification for what is done in Northern Ireland.
Proper prison accommodation is not the only solution. It is part of the story. It is like normal policing and the normal rule of law. I believe that what we are doing is a step in the right direction, but it will not be easy.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Biggs-Davison) generally welcomed the Order, and I am grateful for that. He raised a number of matters with me. First, he asked what was the definition of "relevant officer". In general, it is the probation officer, but if ever the probation officer service is overworked I shall have the power to appoint officers with similar training who need not necessarily be probation officers. But in the first instance they will be probation officers.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether the scheme applied to all sentences. I thought

that I had made it clear that it applied to all except life sentences. There are people sentenced to life. I think that there are 17 under the age of 17 who are in prison at my pleasure. If we multiply that by about 40, it is a remarkable number of people with life sentences in Northern Ireland.
I was reminded by the hon. Gentleman of the discussions that we have been having since August of the year before last when he mentioned the possibility of using increased remission only for those who give up special category. The problem is that there is no definition of "special category" that one can give in law. It is an administrative device, which I supported, introduced by the previous administration. We have spent months talking and getting legal advice about a legal definition.
Then the hon. Gentleman asked about appointments to community service committees. It is intended to appoint people who are representative of the Northern Ireland community and who can contribute towards its development in a varied and wide-ranging way. I have in mind representatives of the trade unions, official organisations and public and statutory authorities. I shall be glad to know if anyone has any ideas. I can only say that I am constantly amazed at the number of official organisations of people in Northern Ireland who are working for the good of the community but who do not hit the headlines because what they do is not newsworthy. But there are wide-ranging possibilities here.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked to what organisations it was intended to provide financial aid for the treatment of offenders. The Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders was formed several years ago as the counterpart of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders which functions in England and Wales. Grant is paid to this central body, which, in turn, is prepared to consider the payment of grant to any other body which is prepared to provide a viable scheme.
I think that that deal with all the matters raised by the hon. Member for Epping Forest. If I discover that I have missed any, I shall write to him.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Antrim, North for the general support


which he gave to the proposals. He raised a number of topics. First, of course, it is easy to say that because we have scheduled offences and non-jury courts, this is a major remove from the normal processes of the rule of law. I have kept my eye on this in the past year or two, although it is not my direct responsibility. Whatever views I had in Opposition, the steps taken by the previous administration were right. Jury service in Northern Ireland is rather difficult. It is not easy for those on jury service to take the kind of decision they might take if they were on this side of the water. But people are sentenced by the due process of law, and it is important to remember that.
The hon. Gentleman said that there was a strong feeling on the Loyalist side about this, and that, whatever was the motivation in the first instance—and the title "political prisoner" runs through Irish history—it was strongly felt by the Protestant para-militaries equally as much by the Republicans.
Then the hon. Gentleman asked whether those in special category were informed of the scheme. I know, through the Governor, that those in special category have been informed of the scheme which I have introduced and which I have talked about for some time. It has been explained to them, but it is done through the Governor.
The hon. Gentleman talked about accommodation, and he was right to do so. It is easy to cry over spilt milk in Northern Ireland. In the early 1970s, Charles Cunningham—at that time a former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office—headed an inquiry in Northern Ireland about prisons. For whatever reason, nothing was done about it. We are therefore left with Crumlin Road, which is unable to hold the prison population. That explains Magilligan and the Maze. There are 1,880 prisoners in compounds and 850 in cells.
Two hundred new cells have been completed at the Maze and a further 300 should be completed this year. Towards the end of 1976 work will begin on the final 300 cells to be provided at the Maze. Provision of this cellular accommodation will enable a start to be made on phasing out special category status. A small cell group for 20 female prisoners is nearing completion at Armagh, and plans are in hand for better cellular

accommodation at Belfast and Armagh Prisons. A new maximum security prison is being built at Maghaberry. Work is planned for three stages, the first with accommodation for 432 males and 56 females. This should be completed by 1981. I do not want to go beyond that because the prison will take a long time to build, and it will be later in the 1980s before it can take its full planned accommodation.

Mr. Wm. Ross: The right hon. Gentleman made no mention of Magilligan prison when he was dealing with cellular accommodation. What is the future of this prison? Is it intended to provide cellular accommodation there, or will it be left with the compound structure? What sort of prisoners is it intended shall occupy that accommodation?

Mr. Rees: Special category will remain for some time, and there will be special category at Magilligan. I have no intention of providing cellular accommodation at Magilligan. I did not want to provide it at the Maze. I had hoped to build it all at Maghaberry, but that would take too long. It would have been better to break away from the Maze, given its history, but that was not possible. I have found that the logic of accommodation and fact often drives one away from the best of intentions.
The question is whether we shall have enough accommodation. The ending of detention has made space available. The new cells will be available. In the course of last year about 1,200 people were charged through the courts. I cannot say how many of them were sentenced, but at a rough guess—and I hope that no one will hold me to this figure—about 85 per cent. of those charged in Northern Ireland are sentenced. That will give some idea of the extra accommodation which will be required.
The prison population increased by about 50 each month last year, but the rate fluctuates considerably. Of course, one of the merits of the scheme I have introduced is that in these four months there will be a reduction of about 500.
I was asked about bail hostels. I hope that they will come into use later this year. These premises for the accom-are designed to reduce the numbers modation of persons remanded on bail refused bail. We shall be discussing this


issue with the Salvation Army and similar voluntary bodies. I am not necessarily a great believer that the State must do everything, and I am impressed with those people who run voluntary bodies like these. There are things that only they can do and it is worth while using them.
The Order will begin to take effect on 1st March. No offence committed after that date will qualify the offender for special category. There will be anomalies, but I have looked at the matter for a long time and this is the only way that we can see it can be done.
I was asked whether there could not be choice in Northern Ireland. I do not think that that is possible, and it is not catered for in the Order.
The release rate under the parole scheme in England and Wales in 1974 was nearly 33 per cent. of those eligible. Longer-term prisoners are eligible for more than one review. About 40 per cent. of parole-eligible prisoners are released at some time during their sentence. I wish that we could have parole. It is by far the best way, but it is not possible in Northern Ireland.
I commend the Order to the House. It is the result of a great deal of work by civil servants and others. In recent months I have increasingly been informed about it, but the detailed work has been done by the Under-Secretary and the prison governors and staff. The Order is a part of returning normality. It may not be easy, but it is something on which we must stand firm. I am sure that I shall receive the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House as the scheme begins to be introduced.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Treatment of Offenders (Northern Ireland) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 20th January, he approved.

CONGENITAL DISABILITIES (CIVIL LIABILITY) [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,
That it is expedient to authorise all such charges on public funds as may result from provisions of an Act of the present Session

which extend the compensation provisions of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 to a child born disabled as the result of an injury to either of its parents caused by breach of duty under that Act.—[The Solicitor-General.]

EUROPEAN SECONDARY LEGISLATION, &c.

Ordered,
That, notwithstanding the Order of the House of 18th November in the last Session of Parliament relating to nomination of members of the Select Committee on European Secondary Legislation, &amp;c., Mr. Russell Johnston be discharged from the Committee.

Ordered,
That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

ARMED FORCES BILL

That Mr. Bob Bean, Mr. Antony Buck, Mr. Richard Crawshaw, Mr. Victor Goodhew, Mr. Brynmor John, Mr. Cranley Onslow, Mr. John Roper, Mr. Cyril D. Townsend, Mr. David Walder, Mr. John Watkinson and Mr. Alan Lee Williams be members of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dormand.]

OVERSEAS STUDENTS

11.17 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Kershaw: I am glad of this opportunity to raise the question of fees paid by overseas students. I am particularly glad to have the opportunity now, because of the rising alarm in informed circles about what the Government's intentions may be. There is what appears to be reliable information in the newspapers that they intend to raise the fees to be paid by overseas students by no less than five times, meaning that the students will pay up to £2,000 a year.
Already we discriminate against overseas students to a certain degree. We require that they should pay £416 a year compared with the £182 for which our own people are asked. Of the nations of Europe, only Austria and the Republic of Ireland share this tendency to discriminate against them.
It is my opinion, shared by many wiser than I in these matters, that if we raise the fees we shall gain no short-term benefit, and we shall do long-term harm economically and to the moral standing of our country.
I deal first with the short-term aspects of the matter. We are informed that there are 95,000 overseas students in this country. Only 30,000 have no sponsorship from their own countries or elsewhere. I shall speak mainly about those students, although the overseas Governments, particularly those of the poorer countries, have reservations about paying more grants for their students over here whom they to some extent support. The former Minister of State in another place said that the costs of maintaining overseas students was £170 million a year, against which was to be set about £60 million in receipts from them. Let us say, therefore, that the total net cost is about £100 million. How the former Minister of State in the other place calculated was not made clear. The only matter that he mentioned was that of resource costs. I believe that this was an unreasonable argument for him to put forward in that fashion, because no one suggests—at least, I have heard no one suggest—that buildings have been erected especially for the accommodation of overseas students, in regard to the academic accommodation. As far as the expenditure on teachers may go, a good many teachers would actually be dismissed if the overseas students were not to be with us, because they would be no classes for them to teach.
The former Minister of State said that the offset was £60 million. He gave no details of that figure, but I should like to give him some headings, at least, if he should be minded to look at his sums again. In presenting these headings to the Minister, I should like to say that I have had the advantage of consultation with the British Council, of which I am a Vice-Chairman, and with the United Kingdom Committee on Overseas Students, although, of course, I do not speak for either of those bodies as such.
The receipts which are likely to be received from overseas students can be divided into about four categories, I suppose. First, there is the pre-study period, and the attendance at British fee-charging schools in preparation for the courses

which the students are to undergo, from which the estimated revenue is £40 million a year. Secondly, there is attendance on private tutors, about which we have obviously no figures but which is extensive. Thirdly, there is attendance at commercial language schools, which is very often necessary. Again, we have no exact figures about that, but everyone knows that it is considerable. Fourthly, we have correspondence colleges, which are especially popular with African students. Then we have examination fees paid by the students.
During the period in which these students are actually here doing their main studies we have a certain revenue from them. We have their living expenses, which are calculated at £1,500 a year each. We have the payments in respect of their dependants, because many of these students nowadays are married and sometimes are with children here. That figure is calculated at about £7½ million. We have the fares which they pay to and from the United Kingdom in British carriers. Normally they use British aircraft or ships.
Furthermore, as Lord Sherfield, pointed out in a debate in another place last month, if one set of parents—fairly well off, presumably—visit their child even once for a week or so during his time here, they would spend far more than would be necessary to support the child from public funds here.
Then we have the expenditure on books and other equipment to enable the students to do their academic study, which is estimated by the Department, I understand, at £200 a year for each student.
There is also the position of British students abroad. There are two British students abroad for every five overseas students here. Almost invariably, British students abroad are very largely supported by the country to which they go, so that they have little expenditure in that regard.
These expenditures must all be calculated and taken into consideration of what the country has to bear.
After the overseas students have done their courses, there are the post-study revenues which we can expect to have from them. They continue to buy books and equipment, academic and commercial, of various sorts. It is perhaps relevant to notice that the balance of


trade in books with Australia is no less than £27 million a year in our favour. That is a very formidable figure indeed, and it can doubtless be duplicated, although perhaps not quite to that extent, in relation to many other countries.
Lastly, we have the general influence of British-oriented leaders in their own countries, after they return home and when they become men of prominence in their own countries. I do not need to expand on that. We know that that exists to a large extent. The sums that I have mentioned are difficult to quantify, but there can be no doubt that they amount to more—perhaps far more—than the £60 million which the Minister of State mentioned in the other place.
I concede that some of these expenses fall on the Department, on local authorities, on university and scholastic authorities generally and on technical colleges, whereas the benefits accrue generally to the community as a whole. The remedy for that position is to put all the expenditure and revenues in one place so that we can properly compare what they are and so that one pocket does not pay what the other pocket receives. The obvious place for that is the ODM. I feel that this is the place where, in the Government machine, these things can most properly be done. It is financed by the taxpayer who is getting revenue from the student in the various ways that I have described, and it is consonant with the work that the ODM does.
In the long-term, the matter is extremely important. First, there is the effect that would be produced upon our universities and institutions of learning if these students were discouraged or their numbers largely diminished. If they were to go, some courses would have to be closed entirely, and I believe that the whole atmosphere would be less academically attractive. The Joint Committee of Vice-Chancellors and the UGC said in paragraph 27 of its interim report:
A substantial increase in discrimination in fees (or perhaps even any further increase in the level of overseas student fees) could be very damaging to the universities.
I have heard it said that there is some bitterness in universities against overseas students, on the ground that they are keeping Britons out, and some photo-

graphs have been published in the papers showing classes of mainly overseas students in some universities and technical colleges. I have never met anybody who has complained that he has been kept out of university because of overseas students. Indeed, even Lord Bowden, who I gather is against overseas students, only argues that he cannot get enough British students to come to his own course and says that we should not teach overseas students because they may take our secrets away. That is an extraordinary obscurantist and chauvinist attitude for an educator to take, and I prefer the opinion of Lord Robbins who, speaking in the debate to which I referred, said that if overseas students went we would suffer spiritually a great deal.
I am distressed at the small-mindedness of some of the objections to overseas students. There was a letter in The Times from somebody who has some kind of authority in the University of Warwick. He complained that overseas students use the National Health Service and, therefore, cause expense. Perhaps they do, but this is not a matter that comes into the question of university education. It is a matter of our organisation of the National Health Service, and as against those students who now take some kind of treatment from the National Health Service we know that there are many rich people who come here from overseas in their later years and pay for medical attention in a large way.
In the long term, also, I believe that we must fear retaliation against our own people. Already we discriminate against Europeans, but they do not discriminate against us. In France, for example, the payment for students, both overseas and at home, is basically £15 a year. In Germany, there is no payment at all, and it would be against the spirit of academic freedom which has flourished in Europe since mediæval times—the spirit of the wandering scholar, and so on—if we were now to take this large step that is feared in circles that are informed about this matter. Discrimination would be serious from a political and moral point of view in regard to the European countries, but in regard to the poor countries, mostly Commonwealth countries, it would be especially serious. Surely education is one of the most enduring and


best forms of aid that we can possibly give to the developing world.
I am informed that already some countries and some Commissions in London are making plans to shift some of their students to Germany and France during the coming year because of the existing discrimination, and rumours of more. I do not believe that this is a matter which we ought to take lightly. In the past it was very difficult for Commonwealth students to go to any other country except this, or to the United States, which is much more expensive, because of the question of language. But today English is so much a lingua franca that it is possible for a student to go to Germany or France and exist on his knowledge of the English language while he gets himself accommodated. It would be very sad if, because of our discrimination, they were driven away to our trading competitors—our friends nevertheless—but also to different countries from those which have had responsibility up to now.
In the long term we know that a student who has had a good recollection of his time here will wish to trade and work with us, bringing mutual benefits to both our countries. That is something which, as a trading country, we regard as of great importance. But this is not a matter merely of trade and of economics. It is about the English language, the British way of life. It is about what Burke called
our leadership in equality and in training for freedom which is the peculiar and appropriate glory of England",
and which still endures though the Empire has passed away. It would be folly and sad if, for the sake of a few miscalculated mean pennies, we were to show that we no longer have pride in our achievements and do not care what happens to our friends.

11.32 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Gerry Fowler): There may be only a few of us present tonight, but those of us who are here, I am convinced, are grateful to the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) for raising this topic. It has been dear to the hearts of some of us at least for many years.
I shall not comment on many of the things the hon. Gentleman said, and cer-

tainly not on that "reliable" information in the newspapers that consideration was being given to a five-fold increase in fees. Of that I know nothing. Neither shall I comment on the detail of the hon. Gentleman's financial calculation, a highly complex topic.
I followed the hon. Gentleman with great interest when he made out a very good case for showing that we have a net balance in our favour from having overseas students. There is, of course, a case to be made against that. But certainly I shall not follow him in discussing how much the exports of books to Australia stem from having overseas students from Australia in this country, because we would get into very deep water indeed.
On one point I shall comment specifically, and that is the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that there might be in some quarters in British universities or other institutions of higher education bitterness about the presence of overseas students. Speaking less as a Minister than as an academic, I very much hope that is not the case. All of us who have been in higher education, whether as students or as teachers, or as politicians responsible for higher education, would greatly regret it. We have all benefited in the past from our contact with overseas students and scholars in this country. I hope we shall preserve in this country universities in the broadest sense—universities of those who are educated and are seeking education whatever their disciplines and irrespective of their country of origin, or indeed of their language. We all, I think, belong to an international community of teachers, learners and scholars.
I suppose that I should try to set the two sides of the argument in perspective. On the one side, the number of overseas students in this country has undoubtedly shown a dramatic increase in recent years. Some colleges are heavily reliant on them in certain subject areas. The total has more than doubled, from 30,000 to over 60,000, within the past 10 years. I gather that the present percentage of overseas university students is 11½ per cent., which is very much higher than in the past. But the economic equation presented by this phenomenon is not at all simple. The cost of an overseas student on a university course, or an advanced course in further education, can be put on average at


about £2,000 in terms of tuition costs, of £2,500 per annum inclusive of notional capital costs. I follow what the hon. Gentleman said about that and I have a great deal of sympathy with him. Those figures compare with a fee of £320 in 1975 and of £416 recommended for 1976.
As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the student contributes a great deal. But much of his contribution is not quantifiable in cash terms. He can be said to enlarge the horizons of the institution. I hope that he will also take away favourable impressions of our education standards and our attitudes. That is why I said what I did about the hon. Gentleman's point about bitterness. Overseas students, especially those studying for post-graduate qualifications, usually enter careers in government, education or the media when they return to their own countries. In those careers they can influence opinion. If they pursue careers iii commerce and industry they may influence purchasing decisions.
I need hardly remind the House of the distinguished leaders of Commonwealth countries and other countries who received their education in British universities and colleges. The fact that overseas students can come here, and want to come here, to receive a British education is an achievement of which we should all be proud rather than resentful. I accept that the extent of our assistance in this area should be much better known and recognised. There are over 10,000 such students out of a total of 60,000 who are supported at our institutions in whole or in part by the ODM. I think it is reasonable to attempt to quantify the element of subsidy provided by the taxpayer and ratepayer, but I do not think we should deny the principle that providing places for such students is an admirable and worthwhile thing in itself.
The problem is, as the hon. Gentleman said, the number of places we should provide. The hon. Gentleman suggested that on his information, if we are indulging in international comparisons, there are two British students studying abroad for every five overseas students studying here. My information, based on the latest official figures that I can obtain, is that 12,000 British students

were studying abroad in 1971—that is a UNESCO figure—compared with over 60,000 overseas students studying here last year. The two figures are not strictly compatible.
The hon. Gentleman's two to five ratio may be a slight over-estimate. It must be remembered that in coming to this country overseas students make a not inconsiderable contribution. At this stage I take up the £60 million which has been mentioned in another place. I should explain that that figure is in terms of foreign exchange, and expresses expenditure through overseas students using our transport services and maintaining themselves while they are here. I use the expression "maintaining themselves" in its strict sense. In no way does that figure conflict with the general argument that the hon. Gentleman presented.
Another point that should be mentioned is that post-graduates in science and technology probably—and certainly post-graduates in medicine—make a substantial contribution in terms of money saved because they provide relatively cheap labour in areas where we are short of personnel. We should not forget that.
The other side of the coin is that these students cost the country a lot of money. We are calculating education costs, and the hon. Gentleman was right in talking about the different purses paying and receiving. Education costs in 1975 were of the order of £110 million net. That is not far short of the figure of £2,000 a student which has been mentioned.
We should remember when we quote that high average cost that a substantial proportion of the overseas student population are post-graduates and that the overseas student population is weighted towards science, technology and medicine, where costs are high in any event. That is at least a partial explanation of the high average cost.
It is questionable whether each overseas student in Britain represents or can be regarded as costing a full cost place in higher education. Patently, many students could be said to occupy marginal rather than full cost places on courses which are very well supported by home students. On the other hand, it is equally true that many courses would not be viable if it were not for overseas


student recruitment. In these cases it may be more reasonable to quote a full cost figure.
But the cost equation is even more difficult than that. Some courses which might not even be viable at all without overseas students nevertheless utilise staff and facilities which would be provided in any event for other teaching and research. So the total equation is almost impossible to solve. I agree that if we get into arguments about how much benefit there is and what the cost is, we should never get agreement.
As for special arrangements to compensate for hardship, it would not be practicable to create special funds to compensate for price increases which certain categories will be expected to pay. That includes overseas students in this academic year. It would surely be invidious to have special arrangements for overseas students alone. Once we went along that road, we should be in great difficulty, because we should find it hard to restrict the provision to that category. I hope that where cases of genuine hardship arise because of the increase in fees which has already been announced—I am not talking about any future policy—both local education authorities and universities will exercise some discretion. I put it no more strongly.
It is argued that other European countries admit a higher proportion of overseas students than we do, yet do not charge discriminatory fees. Comparable facts and figures are hard to come by. There is no consistency of practice, and the overall educational arrangements of different countries vary widely. I know this from my personal experience of studying in Germany.
We all know the American practice of working one's way through college, which differs sharply from our own practice in higher education. We have perhaps the most intensive form of higher education in the world, providing good results with very short courses.

France and Germany admit a large number of overseas students, and charge fees which are the same for home and overseas students, but they vary a great deal from institution to institution. We have to deal with the situation which exists at the moment in this country. We have had differential fees for many years. A change in the practice would immediately increase the burden on public expenditure and thus on the taxpayer and ratepayer.
It is also fair to add, in the context of the United States, which takes a far greater number of overseas students than any other country, that fees there are very often far higher than any in the United Kingdom.
I note the view that the cost of overseas students should be removed from the local education authorities or from the Department of Education and Science and transferred to the Exchequer or the Ministry for Overseas Development. Insofar as that would involve a transfer from local education authorities, not specifically from the DES—because we must not make the mistake of thinking the DES bears all the cost—to the Government, it would involve the Government in a new financial liability without being able to control the extent of that liability unless they also controlled admissions, which they do not. It would also require distinguishing between the element of full cost and marginal cost in the various college places occupied by overseas students.
In short, this is a highly complex issue, and we cannot settle it tonight. All I can do is to assure the hon. Gentleman that the point he has raised and many other equally complex and debatable points are in the mind of the Government and that we shall seek to reach a solution which is equitable both to the interests of this country and to the interests of overseas students here.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at fifteen minutes to Twelve o'clock.